Cymbidium sinese: Not blooming, maybe needs checkup?

[alecStewart1]

Originally Posted by stonedragonfarms

I agree that cultural notes can be hard to come by; something that's been helpful for me is to do a little homework on Tropicos by searching out the species, and clicking over to the distributions tab; once there, you can just plug one of the sites into weatherandclimate.com, and click on the monthly averages tab, which will generate data month by month [ie rainfall, average highs/lows, daylight hours, etc.]; it's not foolproof [ie you'll still have to take into account thermal mass from large geographical features, cooling due to elevation, etc.], but it will at least give you some guidelines within which to work. Simply googling the name of the plant, followed by 'in situ' is also usually quite helpful, as most images will narrow down sites to an even narrower/more precise location [which you can then search out climatic info on...]

Hmm, good to know. I think for a lot of plants it's just getting used to the laziness of what other people say to grow plants at for light, temps and such.

Originally Posted by stonedragonfarms

There are also a number of us on FB/IG that grow Jensoa section Cymbidiums; the 2 'big' groups on FB have active members throughout Asia, N. America, Oz & Europe--which is great for nailing down/comparing culture & getting help with deciphering sometimes illegibly written characters on plant tags...

I've been hearing about all of the FB groups and I would join in a second if I didn't have my skepticism about FB and if joining wouldn't open myself to the headache of extended family on FB.

Originally Posted by stonedragonfarms

What I would consider 'too coarse' is anything over 1/4" dimensionally in your mix. A little bit of media in this range, say 10% or less of total volume is fine, but over that, you run the risk of keeping roots too dry--caveat here: if you're watering daily, year round you could probably grow that way... What comprises your mix largely depends on where you are growing [ie in the house, in the greenhouse, open air], what type pots you are growing in [and what style of pots] & which species in the Jensoa section you are growing. Sinense and ensifolium are both more forgiving of media than goeringii, faberi, kanran and the ilk; for sinense and ensifolium I use equal parts [by volume] of hydrated chopped coir [cocopeat], crushed pumice & medium grade kiryu stone [a type of Japanese pumice that's sort of a calcined clay-pumice hybrid], with a top dressing of about an inch of either pumice or kiryu. For the others, I use a similar mix, though I incorporate large and fine kiryu into them as well; goeringii I have gradually switched over to straight kiryu, about 1:3:2 by volume of large:medium:small, with a top dressing of small grade [if you go the straight kiryu route, you can essentially shift everything to a 3+ year repotting schedule--the media is entirely inorganic]; sinense & ensifolium I repot about every 18 months. Regardless of mix, I grow everything in this section in deep Asian style cymbidium pots [both plastic & fired stoneware].

The mix I got from MysteryGardenStore looks to be nothing too large. If I really felt like it at the time, I probably could've sorted the clay and bark into small, medium to large pieces and put them in the plastic cymbidium pot I also got from the same Etsy story from large at the bottom to small up top, as I guess that's the more "proper" way of using the medium, but I didn't feel like sorting clay pebbles and bits of wood by hand at the time.


While you're here, do you know if breeding between Jenosa species is common or considered a faux pas in Asian orchid scene?

Also is ensifolium just the better species to breed with non-Jenosa Cymbidiums species compared to sinense and goeringii? I kind of like some of the darker flowered sinense varieties (as well as the variegated ones, obviously), but I'm surprised I haven't seen many hybrids that have any sinense or goeringii parentage.