New to the forum..Hello

[riverrat]

I am an orchid addict. I had a small greenhouse full of orchids in the Tampa Bay area about 10 years ago. I am now in the St. Augustine area on the St. Johns River. I just put together a small greenhouse with power and water in November. I put it up because we had a mess of orchids under oak trees and it was about to get cold. We had some phals and onc. at that point. Now I went and got some vanilla, schomburgkias, enc.,...The list goes on and on. Especially considering how small this greenhouse is. I am sure to ask some silly questions...

[estación seca]

Welcome to the Orchid Board!

[charlesf6]

Hey there, good deal with Greenhouse!
Welcome here.

[riverrat]

Thank you for the warm welcome. I will attempt posting some pics in the AM. I am keeping my temp at a minimum of 60F for the cold season. Pros/cons?

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by riverrat

Thank you for the warm welcome. I will attempt posting some pics in the AM. I am keeping my temp at a minimum of 60F for the cold season. Pros/cons?

Welcome!
That's a good minimum temp for truly warm-growing things like Phals (and Vanilla and most Vandas) But there are a bunch of orchids that will put up with colder temps. It is lots of fun to find out what you can get away with...because the greenhouse will max out (if it hasn't already) but in the yard there's always room for one more.

[Paphluvr]

Wecome to the OB. With having had a greenhouse in the past you're not exactly a novice in the world of orchid growing, but you can pick up some good advice here. How small is your "small" greenhouse? I would think that a truly small greenhouse would be hard to keep cool in Florida in the summer time. As Roberta says in her post, the winter minimum temp depends on what you grow. I'm a windowsill grower (in a lived-in portion of the house) and like to sleep cool, so the night time temp is set at 58°F. That would usually be considered too cold for Phals. and too warm for something like Lycaste, but it suits most things well enough and the rest just need to cope. You learn to identify microclimates and place the plants accordingly.
You'll find that they aren't as fussy as some people think.

[riverrat]

My green house is a small 8 x 6 kit on a home made foundation. Most of the orchids had a pretty rough summer outdoors (dogs & giant crickets)

[estación seca]

Agree that will be interesting to keep cool in summer. You might consider a bugproof wood frame enveloped in window screening for the summer.

[riverrat]

My last green house was in full sun. I had to cover it in shade cloth to keep the temps down. I put this one up under an old grandfather oak hoping the dappled shade from the tree would help. It is also a spot in my yard where the orchids were happy last summer. I hope I don't have to cover this on with shade cloth.

[Zindaginha]

Ooh! Curious to see how the vanilla does. Do you think you have the climate to get one to grow to blooming size? Beautiful green house!