patushun's gold?

[james mickelso]

Hello everyone. I just repotted a couple of my rescue orchids and hope someone here can tell me the name of one of the cattleyas.The tag is very old as are all the tags from this batch of rescue orchids I inhereted. As far as I can make out the tag says armacost (rex) and ra? paydirt am/aos. I looked for that and found patushin's gold paydirt. Very beautiful but I wanted to make sure of the name so I could put a "possible" tag on it. There's not much there but what is left of the very pale yellow leafed leading pbulb has a new one inch long green plump bud on it. The roots won't make their way into the world until the growth is fairly mature or even until after it starts growing another new pbulb on it. I planted it in recue mix and set it in 60% shade. I will keep it just moist enough to keep the humidity as high as I can get it. Ambient humidity here is about 50% anyway and temps now are in the 50's at night and 70-75 during the day. I also potted up a C. carol channing. Very nice buds on this leading pbulb. All of these rescues have pale yellow leafs and very poor roots. Very long too so it is a balancing act trying to fit the roots into as small a container as I can. Most of the root material is back along the rizome at about the 3rd, 4th, or 5th pbulb none of which has a leaf. I would leave them in the pots they currently in but the media is now mostly dirt it is so old ( I guess the media to be 5-8 years old from my experience and the few tags with dates like 8-89, 10-02, ect). If I water them the roots just rot so I have been barely watering around them trying to keep them from becomeing desicated. Those that throw out a decent bud , I pot it up when the bud gets to be more than an inch long. I generally put any old pbulbs that have a viable bud on the base of it in a ziplock bag with spag and hang that in the sun. I get around 50% success with that method. I could do more if there was some color and leaves but there isn't so I just give it a shot. When I figure out how to download my digi camera to my laptop and then load them here I'll post pics for eveyone. Keep your fingers crossed. Not for my pics but the new orchids.

[calypsoB]

OOHHH! Now I know what you were wondering with my desicated cat! Have you tried any seaweed or considered water culture? I have to say I tried it as a last resort after everything else failed. It lived for nearly a year in the same state before I decided it either had to do something or die. So I began experimenting. I tried the staking and high humidity method and it rotted the leaves so fast I barely blinked. I left it hanging upsidedown by my kitchen sink-it did pretty well this way..well it didn't die. I tried taking it into the shower but there isn't enough light to sustain it. So when I lost those last three leaves Camille suggested the water culture. I had one newer leave and basically no roots. So I used my homemade seaweed mix-probably a high dose- and placed it into a baby food container just until the pseudo bulb. I cannot believe at how quickly it started regrowth after nearly a year of nothing. So anyway (sorry about the long story!) If they have stalled and nothing else is working I would give it a shot. I really though I would get further rot but it never happened.
ETA I tried sphag and bag too but it rotted what I had left of many plant :S

[james mickelso]

Thanks for the info. Can you tell me a little about water culture and seaweed. I have lots of seaweed around here in So Cal at the beach. I am always up for trying new approaches in culturing orchids. I inhereted around 30 cattleyas and 10 cymbidiums with a few oncidium relatives about a year and a half ago. I've pampered the lot and gotten new buds growing on many of them. Last year I was able to pot up most of them and have flowered 16 of them this year on pbulbs I forced last summer. The remaining are in various stages of death or static existence. I wait as long as I can for the latent buds to start growing. The remaining have started pushing buds slowly using the little energy left in the extremely shriveled back bulbs. The color of the leaves suggest no photosythesis at all. So as the buds get about an inch long, I cut off the lead bulb and two bbulbs, seal with cinnamon, and pot in a rescue mix. It works very well but I am up for learning new techniques. Let me know what you do and I'll give it a try. Thanks for replying.

[calypsoB]

So I used this long brownish green seaweed mixed with some other green seaweed. I put it in the blender with some boiled water (cooled) and blended it up. Since it stinks pretty bad while it rots I put it outside on my balcony in a container and let it sit for a week. It got a lot of sun and when I opened up the container it didn't smell at all! We are on the same coast so I believe we have some of the same seaweeds. I was told to use 3 tablespoons of this variety per gallon of water. I used about a table spoon per in the babyfood cotainer (it kinda slipped in). I haven't had any growth to cut off so I did need to cinnamon anything. I do think that the extreme balcony conditions I had helped kill bad bacteria if there was any. I did use the correct amounts of seaweed jiuce on my other orchids and they are now thriving! The bulb on the cat is nice and full too! I sit it in the water just enough to cover the rooting area. Although some of the new growth is in it I try to keep it out.