How do you support your blooming plants?

[Dollythehun]

Hi, All: I'm not sure what forum this should be in. Please forgive me and move it if need be.

For the umpteenth time during this blooming season, I've picked a plant up from the floor. Clay pots are heavy, so there's been some collateral damage too.

Most of my plants tend to put their spikes out at an angle, so they are top-heavy. I try to stake and train them but can only do so much. Do any of you have this problem, or have a way to solve it? I switched to Whitmire carts last year and it's made the problem worse (and I'm overcrowded too).

It's not possible to move everything blooming to lower shelves and there's only so much outside space.

[camille1585]

What sort of orchids?

I've mostly been lucky in that a heavy cache pot has almost always been enough to stabilize top heavy flowering plants.

[Dollythehun]

Usually the Oncidium tribe are my worst offenders. I've got a few in cache pots. It's hard to find them big enough though. I've thought about ceramic mixing bowls...

[camille1585]

That's a tough one... For plants that are top heavy due to height there are solutions (thinking about spools that clip into wires above the plants and are attached to the plants), but for bulky plants, it's more complicated. I use those reel things at work for some of the crops I work with, which are 6-7ft tall in 4in rockwool blocks, and so never stay upright on their own...

You could try adding rocks to the bottom of the cache pots, but that supposes that you find pots that are big enough...