I found this board searching around and finding the Phal Beginner thread which gave me some immediate help to problems I was having reviving bargain bin dying rejects. I just got into Orchids this year, because apparently I have severe impulse control issues and I seem to get easily addicted to things that take forever to see results. My yard is filled up with fruit trees despite it's small size, and I guess I needed to waste more time and money in the winter.
I swear it's not my fault; I had the best intentions and started because I really hate buying cut flowers for Valentines Day, and decided to get creative by getting my wife a live plant. I went the Garden Center's greenhouse and was dazzled by a fragrant Dendrobium nobile.
Then I discovered their $5 rack.... now I have a bunch of stuff I can't identify and about a 40% success rate saving the phals and mini phals.
I mounted a couple of the whatever they are to random logs because it sounded fun. IDs welcome, never saw the bloom.
Just recently, one of the canes bloomed after the rest had bloomed in March. While playing with it, I noticed that one of the canes had been damaged at some point and had essentially air layered itself. I decided instead of just being boring and potting it up, I'd be all creative and try mounting it on a yellow poplar chunk from the wood pile.
The log I decided to put it on was very punky wood on side, and nice and hard and dry on the protected side. I took a shovel and dug out the softest of the wood leaving a nice depression with some jags to serve as the cradle, soaked the log in the waterfall of my pond for an hour, and researched what angle a den nob might hang on a real tree, and found a lot that were sticking out like upwards whiskers. I decided that looked pretty cool, placed the roots carefully, and used waxed cotton twine to hold some moss that had been soaked in dilute orchid food to the chunk with essentially a terrible version of a running butchers truss. I stuck some thumbtacks on the back side to keep it from sitting against the wall and hung it by a hook, and started
misting and praying!
More pictures of other impulse buys to come!
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