Since Lois Duffins nursery is no more, there is very little Cymbidium production in the Northeast, so I have started to increase my Cymbidium collection. In early Dec 2017, I purchased 150 plugs from Hawaii, mostly seedlings, but also a few meristems.
In that batch, I got 5 Cym dayanum. They were small, but just starting new growths from the base of the original seedling ('bulb' smaller than a pea). I put them into a 5" compot with my regular terrestrial Cymbidium mix.
By July I started to break up the compots, and potted them individually in deep 4" square pots. Most were by then setting 3-4 new growths. One of these plants only set a single new growth, but it spiked and was in bloom by Thanksgiving (= 50 weeks from receipt as plug size).
In this group there are also a lot of warmth tolerant hybrids. These now have 'large walnut' size bulbs and are starting the next growth; I have some hope that I might see a few spikes from these in another year.
The mix that gives me this type of growth (combined with fertilizing every 2 weeks) consists of:
- 3 parts chunky peat
- 2 parts composted manure
- 1 part bark
- 1 part perlite
Cymbidium plugs, 1st bloom in less than 1 year
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