CHULA ORCHIDS Newsletter and Catalog 31170 S. 2ND STREET (WTL) LEBANON, OR 97355 Phone 800 621 4923
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Scroll down almost to the bottom for the Keiki Paste! :)
12.6 Priority Mail Stamp Pad, Ink and Stamp - $20.00
The imprint on this stamp is 1 1/2 x 5 1/2, nice big letters for the Post Office to see them. Use this with the red ink and stamp the boxes before you put them together. Premium Quality Red Ink and pad included.
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14.0 Questions and Answers -
If you have time, I'd like to ask your opinion on fertilizing vandas. I read your page in section 3.5 and the thought about no-one fertilizes them in the wild makes a lot of sense. But I've always read that vandas are big feeders. What are your thoughts and experiences.
Thanks!-ken
Any orchid has Fertilizer Zones, not enough, enough, too much, and way too much.
1. Not enough and the plants look anemic, sometime shriveled (can also be lack of roots) 2. Enough, grow and flower well. 3. Too Much, more than they probably need, but not so much it's harmful, may waste a bit. 4. Way too Much, plant leaf tips can turn black warning you they gonna DIE, back to #3
I have always tried to feed in the Zone 3 range.
ps Vandaceous take a lot of water, that is, many waterings a day is ok, like heat, 70 minimum would be great, like Thailand. Mix is not a problem, as you can see the mix used in these from Thailand is the Thai All Purpose Potting Mix,,,,,,, AIR!! and lots of light, full sun if eased into it a little at a time. Light and water will probably have more to do with flowering them. Get them happy and flowering and they will almost always be in flower. They have no season per se.
Dear Harry, My Greenhouse gets so hot I can hardly stand it in there myself. I have windows I open, 50% shade cloth on the roof, and a mister going all the daytime. What else can I do? Thanks in advance for any suggestions you may have, Nick
Hi Nick, Not an unusual question. Most of the time from "do it yourselfers" who get the "greenhouse" information from a clerk in the local handyman's store. This type of question gets asked a lot, so I'm going to share it here on the site for awhile,,,,
Let me guess,,,,, There are two huge possibilites that come to mind.
1. You may have a green plastic corregated sheeting on the roof,
2. You may have the shade cloth laying directly on the roof. In either case here, read on,,,
1. Green corregated plastic will not reflect heat or sun, in fact, it sucks it in to extreme. I know the garden shop clerk said,,,,,, but do they have a greenhouse with a green roof? Solid colors of any kind soak up the heat and can raise the temperature 25 degrees inside. We generally use an almost clear covering and if you want shade, put the shade over it. It may not need it at all.
2. If you do have shade cloth laying directly on the greenhouse because someone told you to do that, or even if you thought that would work yourself, forget it, it will not cool anything! As a matter of fact, if you lay it directly on the greenhouse it may reach 130 inside!! The dark colors of the shade cloth really soak up the heat to the point that any plastic items touching it may melt!!!
If you put shade cloth over your greenhouse the minimum spacing from cloth to greenhouse root should be 4 inches, and if you can make it a foot that would be best. The shade cloth will get hot, laying on the roof is a direct transfer of heat to the greenhouse and you may melt the greenhouse plastic cover in spots. If it is 4 inches above the greenhouse that will not have as much heat as the direct contact, but will still be too hot. With a foot you elimanate even radiant heat and get it as cool as possible in side. I'll wager, if the shade cloth in now laying on the roof, and you suspend it a minimum of a foot above it, you will lower the temperature inside from 25 to 35 degrees without doing anything else at all. My own greenhouse is a minimum of two feet and up to four between roof and shade cloth.
As proof I can tell you this. My Mom and Dad used to have a cactus farm! Germinating cactus seed was one of the main things they did, then they sold "bubble flats" of baby cactus to other growers. To get it hot enought to germinate the cactus seed and make them really grow as fast as possible, they used to buy the shade cloth in rolls and lay it over the greenhouse to get the temperature in the above 120 range.
3. Misters are nice, but the main thing is to cool it as much as you can without the misters, then add them to keep up the humidity. A "wet wall" with make a terrific difference in the inside temperature because it changes the air bringing in new air with the water vapor and exhausting the hot air inside, but a misting system doesn't do much for cooling unless you are directly under the mist. You need to change the air once a minute like a wet wall can do while it still adds water vapor to the air.
My greenhouse worked like this, a thermostat set at 72 degrees turns the fans on and the wet wall on when the temperature goes over 88 degrees. It goe off when the temperature is back down to 78 degrees and so forth. The "wet wall" has a water pump in a tank of water that pumps water up over the "wet wall", which consists of 4 inch think x 12 inches x 48 inches corragated wax covered cardboard made for that purpose. When the water trickles down thru it,, that is the "wet wall".
Three fans blow air out of the opposite end of the greenhouse thereby pulling air in thru the "Wet wall", that will quickly drop the temperature. As a matter of fact, until I got a thermostat with a ten degree on off range it worked so fast the thing was cycling itself on and off about once a minute!! There are many commercial "wet walls" offered, but I didn't like any I saw and made mine entirely of PVC pipe.
4. Sometimes, and you didn't say one way or the other, the shade cloth is hung inside the greenhouse. That shades the plants, and those that were too close to the hot roof may fair a little better, but that's not the place for the shade cloth. Think about it, the greenhouse still gets just as warm, the air inside is just as hot, all you will have done is cut off the light you want for the plants. Outside and away from the greenhouse is where you want the shade cloth.
Density of the cloth is important depending on your surroundings. I'm here in intense sun in the California coast and I use 80% effectively, it also keeps plants from freezing that are growing outside the greenhouse in the yard. If either of the first two items 1. or 2. I suggested are true, you could FILL the greenhouse with water and it won't help!
So don't be too fast to tear up what you have though, you just may need to arrange it slightly different. Let me know if I hit any of the circumstances correctly! Harry
15.0 Keiki Paste - $10.50 plus shipping
If this is all your order shipping will be $2.05 for First Class Mail with a Delivery Confirmation slip attached.
Keiki Paste just in, 5mg tubes, good for about 200 applications. Just keep this stuff cool in the fridge until you want to use it. There is a small picture included on how to apply to Phal buds. The manufacturer says to get the buds to start put this on, then keep the plant in a dark place for about seven days. A closet will work!! Don't ask me why, but it works good that way!
Two things can happen when you use this paste on the phal node.
A new growth will begin, but always hard to tell if it will be a new bloom spike, or, the new plant you are looking for. It's natural for the plant to start new branching bloom spikes from these nodes and most will. The suggestion from the manufacturer of the keiki paste said if you want to make sure it starts quick and becomes a new plant, he suggests keep in in a dark place for about 10 to 14 days. Not shady, DARK!! Like a closet or cupboard. Yes you still have to make sure it's watered right, and I used to put them in a plastic bag for that time in the dark to keep the humidity up around them because in the closet it is NOT humid, (my closets anyway) So they were completely out of the greenhouse for this period of time.
In the old days, back in the 1960's, a gardener, not an orchid grower, who was pretty savy about everything part of growing any plants, laughed at the use of the paste. He said if he wanted more plants from a particular phal he would just stick one of those giant screwdrivers down in the crown of the plant and destroy the crown. Leave it sit for a bit with the same watering as you used to do, maybe just a tad more to the dry side. In a few weeks you will see other small plants that will start around the base of the one you virtually killed! And there you have your new keiki's. If you keep this original plant it may start five or more new plants for you, maybe not all at the same time, but successively.
Well, I had to take his word for this because I never had the nerve to drive that screwdrive into one, but I have noticed many times, when I accidentally rotted a phal out at the crown, if I kept them around on the bench they would definitely start new plants around the bottom of the original. I didn't give a lot of them a chance because it looks pretty gruesome with a bunch of totally dead looking plants sitting in the greenhouse. What would people think, LOL.
Suggestion -
Now, let me explain something here tho to all the beginners out there. This is NOT the way to make a whole bunch of plants. Professional growers may use it to make a couple of duplicates of some fantastic plant they do not want to go to the expense now of merstemming or perhaps are in danger of losing. It's rarely fun, for a hobbyisst this process may well take over two years to get a keiki with roots that can be safely taken off the plant.
So if you an your friend are both going to use it on plants you purchased at Home Depot so you can "share", i suggest you forget it. You will be way better off to just go purchase another small plant or purchase phal seedling from some catalog. Don't waste you time on this Keiki process. It will be much more costly in time and effort than purchasing another fine seedling will ever be. You will have a two year head start on anything you may get using keiki paste. If anything you have receives an FCC from the American Orchid Society, by all means, use the keiki paste to reproduce that for your buddies, otherwise leave this keiki paste to the professionals.
Click here to order from us Via e-mail. You can use these e-mail links if you have any questions or want a quote or whatever!!! Web www.chulaorchids.com