another newbee

[dordee]

hello, i am new, as of today (last night) with 4 new orchids i bought at Lowe's. i think they just got them because they still look good. usually, after a while, they begin to wrinkle and look sick. they are:
iwanagara appleblossom 'golden elf'
epiccattleya rene marques x epi. stamfordianum
rhyncostylis gigantea 'peach'
brassavola nodosa x cordate hihimanu

okay, i think 'peach' is related to vandas - does the mean it gets large? how do i repot it?

i have had brassavolas before, but they were small ones. does this one get large?

in the winter, everyone comes inside. i can give them west, east or south light. in the summer, they go on the deck under a large oak tree which gives filtered light.
i keep them up on shelves as we have wondering raccoons, possums and squirrels who will upend them if i leave them on the ground. tree frogs like to burrow into the medium so i usually have to evict them when i bring everyone in. phalenopsis seem to do pretty good, but not sure about cattleya types and vandas and their relatives. been all over the web and can't seem to get any solid info on these guys. HELP!

[nutgirl]

Welcome! I wish my Lowe's had that kind of selection.

I can't tell you about all of them but in general the cattleyas and vanda types will want as much light as you can give them during winter. I have mine on a southfacing window. My vanda lives in a vase in the winter and is bareroot during the summer.

As to how big they get....someone else may have some info.
Where do you live?

How are they potted? Did you check the root condition?

Maureen

[trdyl]

Hello Dordee,

I am suprized that you found a Rhy.gigantea 'Peach' at Lowe's. The leaves get to be about a foot long and 2 to 3 inches across. As far as height goes they can get tall but that will take a while. I have seen them bloom rather small (an 8 inch leaf span) How long are the leaves on yours? As far as light goes I think your West window would be good for this one.
The rest in the South window with shading.

The B. nodosa that I used to have was about 6 inches tall. B. cordata can be 18 inches pot to leaf tip. I would expect that the cross between the two will be somewhere in between.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

All of the plants you mentioned are intermediate to warm growing. They all need bright indirect light.

[Zoi2]

Welcome to the OB, you found some nice ones at Lowes.
Joann

[dordee]

Hi Maureen, i was surprised to find 4 unusual orchids myself. that is why i grabbed them quick. they were in plastic pots with large chunks of charcoal, looked like volcanic rock and bark kind on the dry side. the epi. cattleya blbs look a bit shriveled, but root condition on all was pretty good. that is wy i think they must have just gotten them in. i made a bsket for my 'peach' since i found out it is vandaceous and i know they like growing in baskets. plan to give them a week or so to settle in and then start giving some dilute fertilizer.

[dordee]

Ted asked how long the leaves are on my plants. the'peach' seems to be a seedling as leaves are only 4 or 5 inches long. brassavola has 6" leaves and Golden Elf and epicattleya both seem to be seedlings or maybe 1 or 2 years old, not to large. i am patient, will wait for them to bloom.

[dordee]

from the comments on size, i think i will have to eventually find a sepeate window for these guys. course, phalenopsis get big also. i love the lack of information these growers give on the tags. they forget to say how muc space these plants will take when full grown. i got some crow's nest and bird's nest ferns at Lowe's. hey they were only 50 cents each. now i find out they have really long leaves. i have 6. of course, they were half dead and i had to nurse them back to health so tey are still small. gives me time to find a home for a couple of them.

[trdyl]

Dordee,

The reason I asked about the leaf size on the Rhy. gigantea is that I have seen them bloom on quite young plants with a leaf span of 10 inches.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Here's the deal about tags and orchid info, if you're depending on the dealers to provide them for you, stop it. That's just being lazy and it's a bad habit. Humans are hard wired to find the easy way out. Be smart and be in control, don't let your biology run you.

Being that I used to work for an orchid nursery, I can tell you a few things about the subject.

1. It's difficult to find time to deal with lost tags and adding tags for growers to have proper cultural information. If a tag is lost, it's hard to identify them, especially if they're hybrids. When there's a lost tag, we've gotta put them aside to get them tagged. And if, let's just say, an employee is organizing a good sized greenhouse; it's exhausting and time consuming, especially when the nursery has a small personnel, we might miss a few things here and there.

2. The nurseries are in it to make money. To cut costs and increase profits, they're not going to give you much info on the plant.

3. Sometimes the employees don't know what they're doing and even if they did, they're doing what they're told to do.

So if you want good reliable information, don't ask the nurseries, find out on your own. That's what books, the world wide web, peer reviewed scientific journals, trips to where the orchids naturally grow, and internet communities like the OB are for.