Hello from Santa Barbara!

[thespookyasparagus]

Hi all,

I've been browsing the Orchid Board as my break from work the past couple of years and figured it was finally time to say hello and thank you for all the amazing information that the community provides.

My husband and I are species growers. We recently relocated from Orange County, CA up the coast to Santa Barbara. The move has been good (or bad?) for our orchid habit. We've put in a backyard greenhouse for our warm growers- we've a particularly fondness for Coryanthes and other weird Stan family members. Additionally, we grow Anguloas, Draculas, and various other things outside. Our Lepanthes and other cool growers are in a terrarium inside. All in all, I think we're up to about 300 plants or so at this point.

It's funny- was obsessed with orchids, and taxonomy in particular as a kid, thought I was going to be a botanist. While that didn't happen, and I lost interest, I started collecting again during the pandemic, and, well, here we are again.

Great to meet you all, and, again, thanks for all the reading pleasure.


Jason

[Ray]

Welcome, Jason.

I definitely understand your good/bad comment. So what percentage of your income have you given to SBOE? 😉

[Dimples]

Welcome! Hard to go wrong growing orchids in OC or SB, both great climates for nearly any type of plants.

Love the screen name. What’s the story behind it?

[DirtyCoconuts]

welcome. sounds like you guys belong here

looking forward to seeing pics of the various setups

[Roberta]

Welcome!
So much that we can grow along the California coast! Enjoy exploring the differences in the locations!

[thespookyasparagus]

Thanks for the warm welcome! We've only made it over to SBOE once so far, but they have some great stuff and are really nice people.

User name is a reference to a line from an old poem. Go figure!

Definitely blessed to be growing in Southern/Coastal California. Fairly easy to create a wide range of micro-climates and grow a ton of interesting stuff.

[estación seca]

Welcome to the Orchid Board!

[nemesis]

Glad you are here and looking forward to hearing about your collection.

[DeaC]

Looking forward to your Stans and Cory. info and fotos when possible. Challenging to grow here in my humble NJ home. Weird but beautiful species.

[thespookyasparagus]

Originally Posted by DeaC

Looking forward to your Stans and Cory. info and fotos when possible. Challenging to grow here in my humble NJ home. Weird but beautiful species.

Thanks for the welcome! The Corys, in particular, have really benefited from the addition of the greenhouse. I was able to keep them chugging along growing them in the house, and got blooms here and there, but nothing compared to having them in a more controlled, greenhouse environment. We are running 80-85 during the day, 67-70 at night with 75-80% average RH and the pace of new growth, root development, spiking is pretty unbelievable. It's made the work of the greenhouse all worth it. Our Peristerias, Huntleyas, Houlettias, etc also seem to be loving it as well!