Hello Everyone,
I just posted a cry for help on some newly purchased orchids in the propagation forum and felt like I should introduce myself since this is my first night posting to the board.
I am really looking forward to learning a lot from this forum. I ran across it about a week ago, and have been reading all the posts, and seeing that I am sharing some similar interests with some familiar frogger's
I have always had an interest in captives and exotics for as long as I can remember. I've always looked at orchids as being that impossible plant that would never survive out of its natural environment, and kind of left it at that. The only ones I have seen growing, are the ones dying at lowe's and walmart.
Then I started seeing all these pics of growers showing off all there blooming plants. So I started to search around for more info on them, and see that there are tons of people enjoying these fascinating plants.
I can tell its another one of those "bad habits" (hobbies) that my wife is going to "just love". (She's so great about that, she really puts up with a lot from me and my messy projects.) She's not quite the fanatic I am when it comes to this, but she does enjoy the finished results. So I hope to reward her with some beautiful blooms that she can display around the house.
My first orchid was a walmart dendrobium (sp) that I bought over a year ago. It had a broken spike with three fading purple flowers left on it. I got it 25% off, and thought I would try my luck. It has about 6 canes on it and the flowering cane dropped its leaves a couple of months after I bought it. It never really seemed dead though, it stayed solid, and didn't dry up or fall over, so I kept watering it, and tried moving it to different light sources and such. Finally a few months ago, it grew out 4 new leaves on one of the canes. I was shocked to see it growing. Thats when I started to do some research on them, and ran across all the different kinds, and seen all the growers succeeding at them.
I look forward to learning from everyone here, and hope someday I can return the favor.