Quote:
Originally Posted by addictedcountryman
I am a housegrower, well, spare bedroom grower and it is difficult to maintain the air conditioning, much less the humidity, here. Do you have any tips Ed because my plants are sufferering during the semester while i am in school. summer is no problem.
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Nothing that worked really well, I'm afraid. When we were "house growing" we usually had 20-30 plants, mostly Phals. We kept them on humidity trays, and watered with a weekly soak and shower in the bathtub. They grew O.K., but not great. I think the humidity trays made the most difference, although I never tried to actually measure the rh.
The only way we could get them to bloom was to put them outside in the fall when it started to cool off. We lived in the Washington D.C. area for a couple of years, and there we kept them outside all sommer and fall, until the night temps got down into the 50's. When we started doing that they bloomed wonderfully. When we moved to Arizona, we just put them out in the fall, again until temps got into the 50's, and it worked just as well. Here in AZ we also tried to "hose" them every day too, while they were outside. D.C. was pretty much like a jungle in the summer, and they loved it outside there.
Had no luck blooming Catts or Paphs in either place so we concentrated on Phals and Oncidiums until we finally built a greenhouse.
I can't say we ever got fantastic results with them as "house plants", but we did get them to bloom fairly well, and it got us deeper and deeper into "Orchidland".
Ed
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