Greetings from Belgium

[hcastil3]

Hello!!!, welcome

I see you are growing Aerangis punctata

how is it coming along? what's is it growing on ?

[Yéri]

Originally Posted by hcastil3

Hello!!!, welcome

I see you are growing Aerangis punctata

how is it coming along? what's is it growing on ?

Thank you

And I'm afraid we've only had this one for a month, so I can't really give you much culture details...
It's growing on a bit of sphag moss inside the orchidarium and seems to be doing just fine with a morning misting along with the rest of the miniatures

If you have any particular advice on how to grow this one, it's always welcome!

Yéri

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[Discus]

Originally Posted by Yéri

So now we are spending our evenings constructing wooden baskets, plunging our hands in nice and fresh bark and reading up on orchids in stead of going out like a nice healthy young couple should do.

Sounds pretty healthy to me! My wife also likes plants, but has a practical streak that tends to say "ah, but where will we put that?" and "well, there's still some space on the floor..." is not an acceptable answer. She also likes to be able to see individual plants, not a crammed bench full of overlapping leafy chaos!

That's quite the collection; welcome to OrchidBoard!

[Yéri]

Originally Posted by Discus

She also likes to be able to see individual plants, not a crammed bench full of overlapping leafy chaos!

That bench sounds a lot like what we have in our sun porch :P, I should upload a picture of it. There are plants everywhere on and...beneath the table, T8 setup for my seedlings!

We are about to cut our sun porch in half more or less in order to obtain a nice greenshouse-like atmosphere for the plants, so it's going to become a full-scale orchid forest in there!

[hcastil3]

Great!, sounds like you are doing great with that little one, mine is misted once a day in a vivarium as well. I have a lot of air movement on it and its really happy, its throwing new roots its under an HOt5 and growing on some live sphagnum.

I think you are going to be very pleased once you have it bloom

[Yéri]

Originally Posted by hcastil3

Great!, sounds like you are doing great with that little one, mine is misted once a day in a vivarium as well. I have a lot of air movement on it and its really happy, its throwing new roots its under an HOt5 and growing on some live sphagnum.

I think you are going to be very pleased once you have it bloom

Oh wonderful about the same conditions as mine then, although I still have to figure out the right lighting. I'm struggling a bit with the spectrum and Kelvins and all, but I think my T8 is giving 5K Kelvin, which is about right as far as I understand.

Does that mean yours has bloomed already? And if so, what was the size of it once you got it to bloom?
I have 4 leaves on it, with a 5th coming up and the roots are very healthy so fingers crossed

[hcastil3]

they are about 1.5 inches across, and mine has about 5 leaves or so, my humidity is around 80 to 94% with temp drops to 65 F at night, and up in the 80's in the day,

I grow it next my ghost orchids and but with a little closer to the light so far so good, keep me updated on how yours is doing.

so far m ghost orchid seems to be putting out new roots, might be flower spike, but I really don't want to get excited so I'm saying root... aha

---------- Post added at 11:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 AM ----------

Oh sorry i got one 6500K, its seemed ot work for me, but you might get better results on yours!!! who knows!

[Yéri]

I probably don't get up to 80 during the day, more like 70, but most of the 40-ish mounted miniatures in there seem to be okay with that. I don't have any extra heating, the heat coming off the lighting is all I have, but the orchidarium is still new and well...I don't have a door yet so one side is almost completely open, once it's closed temps might climb a bit. Time will tell I suppose

Leaves on my punctata are about the same size, but that's the state I bought it in so not much to boast about :P
Has yours flowered yet?

I'm still not confident enough to try out some of the more difficult species like Dendrophyllax, but good luck with it anyway!

[hcastil3]

its bloomed for me once I've only had it a year or so , but, yes the flower was amazing.

what has been your most difficult one to grow so far for you?

miniature wise, i've looking into getting more miniatures.. which are your favorites so far?

[Yéri]

Hard to grow is difficult to say, we've had a few failures (Scaphosepalum gibberosum for example), but that was mainly due to bad conditions. We started growing miniatures in an orchidarium about a year ago, starting with a 30x30x50 terrarium with an incandescent bulb in the middle...I can tell you our orchids have been stressed numerous times during the first 6 months, but most of them survived somehow.

Favourite ones?
Probably since the very beginning we've had a Lepanthes vellicata and it's a delight! Hasn't stopped blooming since we bought it (2-5 flower spikes on each leaf and blooming successively).
Number 2 is definitely Phymatidium tillandsioides, beautiful little flowers and the plant is just so wacky to look at!
And the third one must be Trixpermum formosanum, had 4 flower spikes. Too bad the flowers only last for a day,but they smell great and just beautiful.

On the side, I'd suggest looking out for Phalaenopsis wilsonii (sheds its leave during winter!) and Pleurothallis penicillata, this one's not really a mini, but has its flower at the end of the leaf rather than at the base like most Pleurothallis.