Encyclia 'Green Comet'

[brsucculents]

It's fragrant too, right?

[Selmo]

Yes, it is brsucculents. It has a nice musk like scent

[AndreaK]

Very nice. How's the snow there today? We live in MO and have about 3 inches. My parents live closer to where you are and have about 4 inches. How do you heat your greenhouse during our winters?

[Selmo]

we got lucky the snow was just to the south and east of us, only a dusting. very cold though 6 deg. on sunday morn, yes we have heat in the green house, a natural gas modine 75,000 BTUs

[No-Pro-mwa]

Wow what a nice plant you have there. I so need one of these.

[AndreaK]

Since you have such an amazingly well grown plant, would you share your culture regime? Fertilizer types, how much, how often, etc. Watering type & schedule (I used to live in Central MO and our water was very hard - it would calcify & burn out the elements in our water heater every few years!), potting medium, light levels, temp. ranges etc...?

[Selmo]

Thanks for the kind words AndreaK. I can give you some insight on how we grow the types of orchids we have. We don't follow a regime, per say, as we have several different types that we grow. So it depends on the type, as to how we treat them. One thing we do, regardless of the type is the water. We use RO (reverse osmosis) water because as you said the water here sucks, ph of 8.2 and a hardness of over 1000 ppm not good for plants but good for saltwater tanks and African cichlids. I grew up in Rolla and they have much better water there. We water once or twice a week in the summer and maybe once a month in the winter. Now somethings need more or less water depending on the type and the weather. We use a RO unit that produces about 30 gallons a day. A good investment. Since we grow in a greenhouse light is not usaally an issue, we do use a 50% reflective shade cloth to give some shade and to keep temperatures down.in the summer. We use a water soluble fertilizer ( 21-7-7 for general use and 20-40-30 bloom booster) at 1/4 strength every third or fourth watering. We use small and medium fir bark witch we mix with prelite, charcoal, sphagnum moss, Hydroton depending on the variety. We have a natural gas heater that we try to keep the night time temperature about 52-55 degrees and the day time temperature at a minimum of 60 degrees. On sunny days it can be 80 degrees inside when it is in the teens outside, pretty nice. I hope I have not forgotten any thing. I know that most of this is pretty general stuff and we are not experts in anyway and we are learning with every mistake and every success. it might work for us and the way we grow, it may not work for everyone, everywhere

[estación seca]

Are you sure it's Green Comet? I can't find that plant, but I found Green Hornet, which looks a lot like your plant:

What is Encyclia 'Green Hornet' anyway?

[Selmo]

Yes, you are right estacion seca it is 'green hornet' not 'green comet', my bad. Thanks for the correction, just one of joys of getting older. That's why a lot of my photos will have the tags in them. My brain is like a long tube completely full of memories and thoughts and if you add one, then one leaves. lol

[estación seca]

I just noticed H&R has seedlings of this on their current list. Our club is doing a group order.