New Addition, Greenhouse, and Repotting

New Additions
We have a couple of new additions. One is called Potnaria Frank Gilmore "Mendenhall" x BLC. George King "Serendipity". I think it is orangey peachy colored looking it up online, which is exciting because I've been hankering after a cattleya of that color. We got it from the potting party for the orchid club. The Club has a bench at the Orchid Trail with donated plants. They use the donated plants for raffle prizes, and many were in serious need of repotting. We made 7 divisions of that cattleya and were allowed to take one home!! It is planted in a 5" clay orchid pot with standard bark mix. We used dry bark for potting this time instead of wet bark. We decided to try that as an experiment to see if they root better. We didn't water for an entire week. We normally would wait 2 weeks, but it is just so hot in the greenhouse that we didn't want to risk it. It is already starting to make new roots from the new growths which is great!!

The other new addition is Dendrobium "Banana Royal". Someone at the Orchid Trail was repotting their's and gave us the old back bulbs. We potted it in a little 2-4" pot with bark mix. We will see if anything happens. It has yellow flowers. I really like some of our Dendrobiums, but I'm not feeling fully committed to them being awesome in general like I do for some of the genera. Like Bulbophyllums: They all look cool and interesting.

Greenhouse

We have two box fans going in the greenhouse right now, which seems to be helping keep the temperature down and the plants from looking sad. I think the tons of air movement is making them be okay with the high temps. It has gotten up to 106 degrees in there even with one fan on. In order to try and reduce the temperature we also got some gravel on craigslist for the floor. We pulled up most of the cardboard we had on the floor, except for one layer, and covered that with gravel. My theory is that the rocks are naturally cooler than cardboard and will help wick the cool from the dirt underneath  up into the greenhouse. We can also water the rocks when it's going to be hot for evaporative cooling. It seems like it might be working so far, but it's hard to tell. 

Repotting

I repotted the Love Orchid. It still has a couple of flowers on it, but they are coming to a close. I was reporting Phals from work and had been planning to do the Love Orchid too. I just wanted to see what was going on inside it's pot. It hadn't been repotted for at least a year and I wanted to make sure the moss was still ok in there. I think the moss was actually still ok for a while longer yet. Since I had already pulled it out, Steven thought I might as well just go ahead and give it new moss. He said the moss smelled fungusy. So it's potted back in to it's same pot with new moss. It hasn't dropped it's flowers yet either. 

We repotted the Phragmipedium bessae hybrid a couple weekends ago. We wanted to put it in a clay pot, so it's root zone would be cooler. We got this idea from a talk we heard at the orchid club meeting. So we redid it in new bark in a 6" clay pot. We put moss on top  to make sure any new roots had something to grow into. The leaf tips are still browning which I still don't understand. Maybe it's a water quality problem? Maybe we need to test our water. We water the Phrags every day to make sure they are staying wet enough. Phrag bessae also still sits in a water dish. It hasn't shown much in the way of distress from being repotted. I hope it stays that way. 

BLC. Irene Finney got repotted too. It was in a tiny plastic pot with lava rock that was falling over all the time. It now has a 6" clay orchid pot with standard bark mix. It seems to be doing just fine, making new roots etc. I don't think it's big enough to flower yet. It's a slow grower with the big leaves. Some of our cattleyas just seem to be really slow moving.

I also need to repot the Octoporchid and haven't had a chance yet. It is still flowering, but starting to make a new growth, and that new growth will not fit in it's old basket. Plus the moss is old and probably really nasty.