General help and suggestions appreciated

[Aussie42]

G'day all.

As mentioned in my icebreaker, I received a large amount (200 or so) of rather sick orchids in a very short space of time last December. It was a hot summer here and I had to get them potted and find somewhere to put them asap. The pics of my current arrangements are attached. This is my first major foray into growing orchids and the amount of plants I got (going from about 20 to 220) came as rather a shock. The balcony was going to be WAY too small for this little lot.

I had no time, and don't want, to build a greenhouse. We may be moving in the next year or two and I don't want to have to move more than is necessary. Given the rush to get the plants out of the heat, the space under the tree down back seemed like a real winner. It gets dappled sunshine, my guess about 60-70% shade which is just perfect around here. There are also sunnier and shady spots I can play with.

The benches have axle grease in a ring around each of their legs to prevent ants etc from climbing up and nesting in the pots. It's working well (a tip from my Dad). There are, however, other unforeseen problems. I've had to leave an alley on one of the benches because the possums use a branch as an alleyway. If I don't, I'm picking up plants from the ground and repotting every morning.

Under-bench weed suppression is fresh lawn clippings. It works well.

Oh, a surprise is that it appears that possums like to eat the green tips of Thelychiton kingianus (formerly Dendrobium kingianus). My new strategy - hide them at the back of inaccessible (to possums) benches. I don't think it couldn't have been grubs as the remaining parts of the roots were roughed up around the ends.

The Great Grub Fight

The big shock was that the main tree they are under has a nasty habit. It's beloved of a certain kind of insect that lays eggs in its leaves. These leaves then die and fall - yep, straight into my pots. It took me a while to realise there were grubs in my pots, presumably making a meal of any nice green tips on the roots. When I worked out what was going on, I took every plant and put it in a container of water, picking the grubs coming to the surface off with tweezers. This took a while, with 200 or so pots to do.

But a few weeks after that, I realised I still had issues. Desperate times and all that. I mixed up 10 litres of Neem oil and water, and dunked each pot and wet every leaf. I did this on about 40 plants to see if it worked (see below comments re Rogor allergy) and to see if it would kill anything in particular. No problems with any of my plants, but a week later I checked (by dunking some pots in water) and the grubs were still there and healthy.

So I began again. I soaked every pot - I found that about 2 hours was required to drown any grubs that didn't want to come to the surface. I found a lot of surprisingly large, angry spiders coming out too. And two or three cockroaches. And a new type of grub, it encases it's body in dirt/charcoal. Commonly about the size of a grain of black rice, they can be from 1 mm long to 1 centimetre. Oh, the hours of tweezing... I finished the lot a couple of weeks ago and don't see any more little webs appearing in the charcoal, which is a sign that there are happy grubs in there.

I think the grubs are seasonal, so I could be right for a few months. Suggestions for an easier fix, possibly involving a stronger insecticide and a short dunk/bath would be appreciated (and save me weeks, quite literally).

Scale

Some of the plants arrived with scale. It's an armored scale. I got some Rogor and gave them a hit with that, naturally mixed as per the directions. But one type of plant I have multiple pieces of didn't like the Rogor. I believe it's a dendrobium but honestly, I'm not that sure. Not a typical form. The various pieces of this plant I hit with Rogor yellowed within 2 days and had dropped all of their leaves within about 2 weeks. They've started coming back to life now (phew) but I'm looking for a cure for armored scale that may not offend.

Again, suggestions would be welcome as the "allergenic" plant is susceptible to scale and one of the worst offenders. I'd rather cure than kill.

Potting Media

My Stanhopeas and the cymbids are all in cymbid mix. Everything else is in charcoal or charcoal mixed with some pumice stone. I'm thinking of slowly changing to a fairly non-porous gravel in case I have to dunk the plants again. The long dunking necessary has waterlogged some of the charcoal in a few of the pots and now it can hold moisture for days instead of hours.

But a good "swift dip" poison might save me from having to change media.

Watering

We're on watering restrictions here and only allowed to water by bucket/watering can for 2 hours Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I've been watering all of the plants in charcoal 3 times a week and the cymbid mix plants as required.

I understand it may be a good idea to ease off watering in winter and as it's getting into winter here now, I was thinking of switching to a Monday/Friday only watering plan.

Is this a good plan?

Fertiliser/nutrients

I must confess that my father-in-law is a big, big fan of Phostrogen. And I've become one. I pretty much use a 1/4 strength Phostrogen mix every time I water. The only exceptions are when I use Seasol (about once every 2 weeks) or some weak, perhaps 1/4 strength or less, Charlie Carp.

I spoke with a chap and mentioned I always gave the plants Phostrogen and he told me to stop. Then I told him I only used 1/4 strength and he stopped thinking I was insane. He thought it was a good plan. Well, I'm open to suggestions on the regime as well as any alternatives that may assist.

I might say that the plants have been thriving. One Dendrobium crumenatum I have - formerly rather sick - has sprouted 9 new leads as well as 6 pups on the old growth. That's the standout, but most of the other plants are doing well too.

I do have one concern about the Phostogen though. It may be making a couple of my vandas a bit...unusual. The last two photos posted here are of some bifurcated roots. On about 4 vandas out of 20 (and two distinctly different growth forms) formerly thick roots have split into pairs of thin roots. And the new roots on these particular plants are all thin, perhaps 1/4 the diameter of the old roots. Could this be the Phostrogen? Anyone else have this happen to them? I'm not sure it's a bad thing, but I'll need to keep an eye on it.

I think that's all my questions for now and this post is quite long enough.

Any general or specific suggestions will be appreciated.

Cheers,
Aus.

[Aussie42]

Well, that was fun. Thanks to a tip, I've just soused about 120 plants in pyrethrum. Some way to go yet to get them all, but the results were immediate, visible and good.

The drawback, though, and possibly only with a setup like mine, is that it seemed to make the spiders faster and more aggressive. At least until they die. There's nothing like having a huntsman leap out of the pot you're holding (as you souse) and race up your arm. It certainly gets the heart pumping.

You know, I'd always had a "live and let live" plan with spiders, but having three of them race about on me kind of changes my opinion of them. Somewhat less than fun, and my response had to be restrained as the back neighbour's kids were playing in the yard. I hardly want to be accused over the fence of teaching young children naughty words ;-) Luckily I managed to keep any "salty" language in check and didn't drop/damage any of the 3 plants I was holding when I had surprise visitors to my arm/torso.

I can't believe the number of new leads etc that are coming up - I'd always figured that winter was a dormant time for plants, but I'm happy to be wrong on the point.

I note the proper term for "pups" (Dad used to use this) is keiki, and I certainly noticed some more of them coming on today than I'd spotted on my usual daily inspections.

I'll let you know how the pyrethrum works in the longer run, and am hoping that my plant/s with the Rogor allergy will react well to it.

Cheers,
Aus.

[quiltergal]

Hey Aus! Sorry no one responded to your earlier post. Normally spiders don't bother me too much but anything crawly from down under would make me jump. You seem to have an over abundance of poisonous critters. Good to hear the pyrethrum worked. On the Den., it may not object to the Rogor but is instead displaying it's discontent at being moved. Their typical reaction to a new locations is to turn yellow and drop leaves. Eventually they settle down and get happy. Treating scale is kind of an uphill battle. I think you have to decide if the plant is worth saving or not. I scrape the visible scale off with a cotton ball or Q-Tip soaked in rubbing alchohol. Repotting is probably in order to get rid of the crawlers. I also use a systemic pesticide that is time released to get the ones I can't see. I'm not sure if something like that is available in Australia or not. I use a product called Bonide.

[Vanessa]

Hi Aussie42,

I read with great interest your icebreaker and your post above. Bravo to you as you seem to have what it takes to endeavor to persevere. Best of luck.

I grow Dends outside on my lanai and a few in trees because they get very large. The rest I grow under lights in a guest bedroom where the orchids are the 'guests'. If a spider raced up my arm I think I'd have a coronary is another reason.

Hang in there and keep us posted on your progress. You will learn so much on this board.........good bunch of helpful people.

[Aussie42]

G'day all.

Well, I tried to post yesterday but somehow got booted when I tried to submit. I figured it was a timeout thing so today is a cut and paste from a word doc.

The last of my plants were hit with pyrethrum over the weekend. No more racing spiders bolting up my arm, I'm pleased to say. I'm thinking of grabbing a 3 litre container of pyrethrum from an agricultural supplier for next season. Water well on day 1, water with pyrethrum the following day. It sure beats spending maybe 15 hours drenching and draining each pot to conserve your 200 ml of pyrethrum.

I discovered that you can mix 10 ml of pyrethrum to a litre of water and it's still very effective. That's half the recommended dosage on the container I bought.

Also, I decided that the next time I re-pot my stanhopeas I'll be losing the paperbark lining. According to an article I read 4 layers of newspaper works just as well and potted some of my plants in this, but most importantly to me newspaper provides less of a home for bugs.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't movement that hurt the dendrobium plants that seemed allergic to Rogor as I recall they hadn't been moved in quite some time before I poisoned them in situ. But thanks for the heads up on not moving the plants too much (if at all) Terri. I certainly didn't know that…

As for scale – which is less of a problem as I see it than grubs eating new growth and roots – that'll be a case of Rogor where appropriate. I tried the alcohol/q-tip method and can honestly say that it would take me weeks of full-time work to clean the plants. I work, so this is impossible. But I'll see what can be saved. I don't know what plants are actually worth saving or not as I don't know what the vast majority of them actually are, but they all deserve a chance at life and Rogor is not that difficult to apply.

Crazily enough I've been experimenting for some time despite my running battles with bugs, scale and the repotting nightmare I had to deal with. My father-in-law has a secret technique to get plants to designate nodes as keiki rather than flower. Last Christmas I was amazed to see a soft-cane dendrobium that had sent out 95% keikis on all younger canes, all 10 inches high when I saw them. No keiki paste required. One of my plants is looking very interesting – 3 keikis and counting from the first three nodes on the top of a cane. This could prove a great way of reproducing smelly plants if it works, so my fingers and toes are crossed.

Long way to go yet, and I might need a more detailed list of ingredients though. But there's no rush.

Well, not much else to report. Careful Rogor-ing to resume during the week, with perhaps fortnightly follow-ups. With the "water with pyrethrum" theory I won't need to change my potting media so that's two problems solved. And I'm pretty happy with a new fertilising routine I've worked out. If I miss out on some flowers this year but the plants have good vegetable growth I'll be happy.

Cheers,
Aus.

[SaraZ]

What is your Keiki secret, if you wouldn't mind sharing Your posts are very informative!

[Lene Th.]

I find your posts very informative, as well! And hope you will continue to give us reports of how youre rescuing-projects are working!
Good growing to you!

[betwixtimes]

A suggestion if you have the space and want to keep the leaves with grubs etc out. In the states we have basically small pavilions for car ports or event canopies--- although most are around 10 feet by 10 feet (the length of a car), covered in reinforced tarps and are relatively inexpensive and easy to put up. I think last I checked it was somewhere around $100-$200 USD.