Masdevallia culture, cool growers outdoor culture and Kool logs

[u bada]

So Paphy, Wintergirl and i were discussing on another thread I posted on masdevallia erinacea kool logs then morphed into masdie culture outdoors... not sure where to put this but for maximum involvement (I hope) I'm placing it here...

We left off at a point where I mentioned you should see how SBOE and Andy's grow things outdoors...

And wintergirl was talking to us about kool logs, while paphy was wondering how it works, what it's made of, etc.

masdevallia erinacea in bloom

Also RandomGemini's thread on her masd. maui lollipop also was a discussion on masdie growing

Masdevallia Maui Lollipop in Bud
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So to answer estacion seca's inquiry... Andy's and SBOE basically just grow many of their cool growers in open frame structures and not much else, well both areas are crammed with plants and there is shade cloth or overhanging trees and that's about it. They don't water more than what you'd suppose they do, average 3x a week. Andy uses R/O, but dont think SBOE does anything with there water... in fact I recall Paul saying they use well water?

Andy has discussed a lot to me (albeit mostly by email) that many of the plants are subjected to higher or lower temps that they're suppose to handle in wild and do fine. When I was there last summer it was 80-90 and still felt that way in cool grower area and cool gh (Dracs are in a very shady GH. Don't recall humidifiers or swamp coolers or anything...

I'm in santa barbara a few times a year and even there temps and humidity is up and down despite how coastal it is.
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to jump around, and discuss something from random gemini's post...

Originally Posted by RandomGemini

I believe my veitchiana had problems because it was too wet. It's hard to keep a masdie too wet, but I drowned the root system every other day to help get the mealybugs it was infested with to surface. This helped deal with the largest portion of the population, but I believe that the side effect was root and leaf rot. I stopped doing the soaking and switched to treating the plant with Bayer Rose and Flower. Managed to save two leaves and about five good roots. I purchased the plant in a five inch pot. It's now potted in a two inch pot. I hate that, but I finally managed to get it back to happy.

It survived my 100 degree summer just fine, last year but I grow it indoors in the AC.

I've grown a fair amount of masdies in the day, mostly in growing cases, but attempted some in a double potted method I learned once upon a time- the potted plant in sphag set in a larger pot. The sphag holds moisture around the pot without the roots sitting in water, and the sphag adds humidity around plant... well, didn't work for me and i think it's because the roots really were too wet.

probably as is the case of SBOE and Andy's is that outside the breezes make the difference during the heat, how they keep them more moist I'm not sure but I suppose it's worth asking when I'm there next.

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Lastly for this long post, if anyone wants to talk about kool logs to add what wintergirl discusses feel free too... I'm curious about them as Paphy is... definitely may be a solution to growing masdie's in warmer temps...