Okay, I recently decided I wanted a little something different for my dendrobiums. I have three in my collection. One is rather large and I like where I have it now, but I had two other that were quite small and wanted to do something with them. I decided I wanted to repot them, but in a hanging basket. I couldn't figure out how to go about this cost effectively, but at the same time without it looking too gaudy.
Here's what I came up with:
I went to my local Home Depot and wandered around forever and BOOM it hit me! Gutter guards! I purchased two of the downspout strainers that are mesh and are used to keep out leaves from the drainpipes. I opened both of these and then tied the mesh together with breadtie wires stripped of the paper. You can't even see them on the basket. I had to figure out how to close the bottom of the basket though. I had some thin wire for use in necklace making and I looped it over and around and around to form a closure for the bottom of the basket:
After all this was said and done, it was time to take my two smaller dendros out of their old medium, place them in the basket with the new medium and find somewhere to put my new project! I potted the dendros in a mix of coconut bark (various sizes), fine fir bark and an array of crushed packing peanuts for aeration. The two small orchids are a
Pegasus Pink dendro and the other is a
NOID dendro.
I attached a chain to the side of the basket and hung it in one of my spare rooms where I had previously placed a hanging votive holder of sorts. My
Pegasus Pink is actually in bloom now!
I would say grand total I spent about five dollars for the mesh gutter strainers, the chain I already had in my storage room, the packing peanuts were saved from previous mail packages and the potting medium was a total of twenty bucks for the two seperate bags of coconut and fir. However, I was able to repot a host of my other orchids AND still have more left over for later. Thought I'd share my latest venture with you guys! Hope you enjoyed it!
P.S. It's so easy to water. I hang it on the knob of my kitchen cabinet above my sink and water away! The run off drips right down into the sink (pretty ingenious, huh?).
Hanging Basket Dendrobium
Threaded Mode
