Mounting on a tree fern pole

[clusty]

Originally Posted by james mickelso

As for your desire to mount onto a tree fern post, I think it would be a good experiment. The fiber should absorb the water, wick it up to the top, and help keep your orchids hydrated. but I think you would not want to keep it wet all the time as it would just rot the tree fern post after awhile. And because of the wicking you would want to use distilled water because the alternating wet/dry cycles would precipitate the salts out of the water onto the fibers quickly. But using it to help keep the orchids hydrated once in a while when you are gone for a week would work. I would go so far as to put it into a larger pot filled with gravel or hydroton pebbles. I just might try that myself come to think of it. I could put it into my living room and have some rescue phals in the house all the time. Hmmm. Thanks for the idea.

Exactly what I had in mind. In my case i will use lava rocks as I cannot seem to find expanded clay balls.

[clusty]

Ohhk,

I have my fern pole now.
Hard decision is what orchids should I attempt to mount?
I was thinking one of these:
maxillaria tenuifolia
bulbophyllum frank smith
Odontoglossum.

I got some other "big bulb" orchids I could attempt.
Whom do you suggest should go first ?

[james mickelso]

anything you have handy. I always mounted the smaller catts and laelias. I tried to put different types with different flowering times.

[tucker85]

Originally Posted by clusty

Ohhk,

I have my fern pole now.
Hard decision is what orchids should I attempt to mount?
I was thinking one of these:
maxillaria tenuifolia
bulbophyllum frank smith
Odontoglossum.

I got some other "big bulb" orchids I could attempt.
Whom do you suggest should go first ?

I take three things into consideration when I'm mounting orchids.

1. Do the flower spikes need staking? If the flowers are heavy and the flower spike can't hold up the flowers on it's own, then I don't put it on a mount.

2. Does the size of the plant look reasonable for the mount? I want the orchid to look nice on the mount so I don't want to put a huge cattleya on a small mount or a miniature orchid on a large mount.

3. I prefer to mount orchids that have good size pseudobulbs so the plant can survive if I decide to go out of town for a week.