Quote:
Originally Posted by Poppyseed
King, do you get blooms very often with those?
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I got two year old seedlings for about three months only. So mine are near blooming size. I haven't seen blooms yet. I have faith that the larger divisions that are growing new tubers will put up spikes sometime next year.
I'll see flowers for sure. Just can't say when exactly, they're a bit unpredictable.
Blooming sized plants are a bit more predictable.
Disa tripetaloides is an evergreen Disa and is the easiest of all the evergreen Disas. There's no dormancy period for these. All year round you'll see the leaves.
Unfortunately, I wasn't told whether mine was from a winter-rainfall area or a summer-rainfall area as they have a wide distribution in South Africa and can appear in both regions. The only importance of this information with this particular species is the flowering period. That's it.
Disa uniflora is the largest flowered of the group. It is also evergreen.
Disas are relatively inexpensive plants and they're not that hard to grow, unlike what many places say. They're very very fast growing and mature very quickly from seed compared to many other orchids.
I forgot to mention,
use distilled water or RO/DI water and fertilize very weakly from time to time. I'd say 1/4 strength or 1/8 strength fertilizer is sufficient each time you fertilize. You can even get away with fertilizing once every two weeks with Disas. They're pretty undemanding other than
requiring low dissolved minerals in the water.
Don't let them dry out at all. They're very difficult to over water. Just make sure the media is loose and porous - like I said 2 parts perlite/pumice and 1 part SuperSphag. They grow near perennial streams. Disa uniflora grow near streams or on the cliff faces of waterfalls and stays pretty cool and wet all year round. They like good air circulation. Growing outdoors is perfect for them just protect from extreme heat and/or frost.
Just in case you're wondering,
the leaves of Disas can experience temperatures well into the 100's F, but you MUST keep the roots cool. Terra cotta pots help. Cold water helps if it gets too warm.
Disa uniflora flowers make excellent cut flowers btw. You can even pollinate the cut flowers while they're in water and it'll still produce fruit. How awesome is that!
Disas also have the added advantage of being small to medium sized plants. The ones that are commonly sold rarely exceed 1 ft tall.
Check out this link:
www.disas.com
The person who started this website passed away. But his son keeps the site running, but according to what I've been told by Wally Orchard, the son doesn't grow Disas himself.
Regardless, navigate the site and you'll find a lot of good information about Disas.
I got my Disa tripetaloides from Wally Orchard's Afrodisa btw.
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