What are best Catasetums to grow in the home?

[bellina9]

Gwallogwyn,
Thank you so much for posting!!! my outside collection just came inside, and during the fall and winter the sun moves so it doesn't hit my windows, so I've been looking for an indoor set up and I think if I model it after yours I can be quite successful!
Could you give me some more detail about your lighting. Are all your lights CFLs? how many CFLs and how many watts do you use? I assume you use full spectrum lights?
Again, thanks so much! I'm going to be setting this up this weekend!

[hosshead]

A bank of T5s and/or T8s above your stans and catasets will do nicely.
I do a set-up similar to Gwallogwyn,(out in the summer and inside during the winter), and it works fine for me.
I have a stan occulata that sent its spike AFTER I brought it in, it's busy filling out now. In another week or two, my house will be filled with that delicious fragrance!

I have had GREAT success purchasing from a store on ebay called "greatlights4less".
You can get some nice starter kits from them, some really nice deals on fixtures, and I have never received a broken tube from them, not ever.
They know how to pack and ship, which is a big issue for me.
I live in an area where there's really nothing for the orchid grower....
So finding these guys was great.

[Gwallogwyn]

Bellina9

The room where I have my light set up has 4 light carts. Each of these have 3 shelves with a 4 bulb fixture above them with Electronic ballasts. They came with 40 watt Gro-Lux wide Spectrum bulbs. As the bulbs burn out I have replaced them with
cool white bulbs from HomeDepot.
The shelf spacing is 18” from the lights for the top and bottom shelves and 15” for the middle shelf. One of the carts has the center shelf with 2, 40W bulbs in it, which
I use for seedlings. I haven’t noticed much difference using the mix of bulbs. I have
seen a difference since I started to use the Michigan Stat University fertilizer. ( AOS ‘Orchids’, june 2003, PP 454-459 ) I make a mixture of 2 Tablespoons to 5 gallons of water with an addition of 10 drops of Superthrive.
I grow predominantly 150-200 stanhopeas and 20 or 30 catasetums. The stanhopeas
usually bloom during the summer months when they are outside. This was an odd summer here being cooler and dryer than usual. So I have 7 or 8 that are still to bloom now they are in the house. These I will hang in a south facing picture window. Several of these I will use for hybridizing when they bloom. I keep pollen
frozen with SilicaGell for this purpose.

[nancy]

Awww - I bet it'd be cheaper in the long run to just move south. Warmest (and humidest) corner of heaven.
Cheers - Nancy