Catasetum Brazil-Import

[Lupus]

Thanks for the replies! I'll try the best.

isurus 79, I watched your video on the PET-Method and potted allmost all my Catasetum that way this spring and they seem to like it a lot. I tried this method also with Cyrtopodium andersonii and another Cyrtopodium which I can't recall the name at the moment, and interestingly they are literally exploding and got their roots right down into the water reservoir. Only one Catasetum spec. Peru put its roots up into the air and then a slug ate the tips It doesn't look good, not sure what to do with this guy, there are no roots going down into the Sphagnum.

@Keysguy: yes its a nice city. I got a house with garden in the upper hills a little outside of the city, where the weather is quite harsh. There is a large temperature difference compared to the city and specially the low temps are much more extreme. Great for cool growing species in summer, but winter temps occasionally go down to allmost -40°C (-40°F). I just spend the summer there and in winter I live with my girlfriend in her flat in the city because the house is not insulated. As my orchid collection expanded vastly last year and I just didn't have the room for all the plants in the greenhouse, I insulated one room of the house, wich I use as a warm/hot grow room with LED in winter and the orchids loved it. I'm now renovating and insulating the whole house and buidling a big sunroom for the plants (I only got a small greenhose - which is cramped - at the moment) to be able to spend the whole year there. But a little bit more of a warmer climate would be nice Its basically only the three month of june, july and august that are for sure frostfree.

[isurus79]

Originally Posted by Lupus

Thanks for the replies! I'll try the best.

isurus 79, I watched your video on the PET-Method and potted allmost all my Catasetum that way this spring and they seem to like it a lot. I tried this method also with Cyrtopodium andersonii and another Cyrtopodium which I can't recall the name at the moment, and interestingly they are literally exploding and got their roots right down into the water reservoir. Only one Catasetum spec. Peru put its roots up into the air and then a slug ate the tips It doesn't look good, not sure what to do with this guy, there are no roots going down into the Sphagnum.

Very interesting! I've wondered how other genera would do with PET! I'd love to see photos!

[Lupus]

I potted up all 40 or so plants and was very happy to see that except for one, all had tiny little nubs of new growth already. Also the Pseudolaelia dutrae, the rupicolous laelias, and a couple of Cattleya nobilior. Most of them have 2, some even 3 new growth coming up. I put them in the hot and humid greenhouse (except for the rupicolous laelias) and will wait a while to get the new growth to size and then move them under LED in fall when the light will fade. Only the sobralias look quite messed up, they didn't take the journey well. Gongora rufescens and Stanhopea lietzei var. aurea where pretty desiccated but recovered quite fast.

isurus 79: I will post pics of the 2 cyrtopodiums in PET later on today. But don't expect too much. The plants are still small. I potted them up in the PET method pretty much exactly 2 month ago and at that time they where still dormant, had no roots and no sign of new growth. I had them under LED with a 16h day/8h night cycle for the first month, then moved them to the greenhose and put them outside when the temperature was suitable to get them used to the full sun. So for that short time the growth is to me pretty exceptional. On the other hand I don't have much experience with Cyrtopodium yet, so its hard to tell for me how they would have grown if potted conventionally. I only have C. palmifrons since last year, which is pottet conventionally in a clay pot and doing quite ok, but nothing compared to the ones in PET. It seems that it dries out too fast. By the way, the other species I couldn't recall before is C. polyphyllum.