Group order for terrestrial orchids.

[rosemadder]

Okay, I sat down and read the seller's page for a while. Very interesting stuff! The seller is a mycorrhiza expert, who knows how to propagate these orchids himself with the proper fungi.

The ones for sale are something like 2-5 years old, so obviously somebody's having success keeping them alive... He even speaks of having Thelymitra seedlings spontaneously popping up in new parts of his yard on their own! And that's in Germany or something, too.

Seeds can be harvested only from cultured stock. Thanks go to all, who have contributed with seeds.

In the appropriate time, ripe seeds will be sown in soil inoculated with suitable mycorrhizal fungi. In the second year the plantlets will be transferred outside into garden beds. Once inoculated with the mycorrhizal fungus, usually the plants will carry its symbiont during its whole span of live.

...

In case the soil is not suitable for the fungus, the plants may loose its symbiont. However, in appropriate substrates you will never have to care about the fungus.

In other parts of the page he mentions that the symbiotic fungi for a phal can kill another type of orchid if they get the chance, and vice versa. Even the proper and beneficial fungi are always trying to eat the plants they're living with, and the plant must be strong enough to control its own fungi in order to stand against it and use it successfully. So, too much stress or bad conditions can cause the plant's immune system to fail, and bam, there's rot.

It's too bad the seller doesn't seem to be offering any Thelymitra variegata... there are a few hybrids but I'm having a hard time finding out what they look like.


This page here also looks like it might have some useful info, although the organization is rather bad and confusing.

RON HEBERLE ORCHIDS

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Check out:

RetiredAussies.com

Not very many people offer Thelymitra variegata for some odd reason.

---------- Post added at 01:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:06 PM ----------

Also check out the page that features in-situ photos of Thelymitra luteocilium. Look at the ground they grow out of - that's how they really grow in the wild.

To locate the page...

On the home page of RetiredAussies.com, click on Victoria.

Find Thelymitra and click on that.

Find Thelymitra luteocilium and click on that.

It's the second photo.

---------- Post added at 01:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:20 PM ----------

The first photo of Thelymitra megacalyptra, also shows a similar growing environment. The soil is very gravelly.

To locate the photo:

1. Home page

2. Victoria

3. Thelymitra

4. Thelymitra megacalyptra

[rosemadder]

Ooh, nifty site!

If you right click the links and open it in a new tab or window, you can get it out of the frame of the main page and the actual address will show:

Thelymitra luteocilium

Thelymitra megcalyptra

It's really too bad Thelymitra variegata is so hard to find. It's gorgeous. (I'm an absolute freak for anything purple... much less neon, iridescent purple with crazy spots and stripes! ) I wonder if they're fragrant at all?

[kevin1217]

Do you recommend any easy ophrys?

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by kevin1217

Do you recommend any easy ophrys?

I recommend picking from the list of Ophrys that Kip had success with.

If you feel adventurous, go ahead and pick any one of them.

I think they also naturally grow in gravelly areas, I'm not too sure. But I think with these, the rocks are composed mostly of calcium and magnesium.

You can also try asking the people from Terrorchid.org. Most of these guys are European. They'd know better than I would.

[lambelkip]

Originally Posted by King_of_orchid_growing:)

I recommend picking from the list of Ophrys that Kip had success with.

If you feel adventurous, go ahead and pick any one of them.

I think they also naturally grow in gravelly areas, I'm not too sure. But I think with these, the rocks are composed mostly of calcium and magnesium.

You can also try asking the people from Terrorchid.org. Most of these guys are European. They'd know better than I would.

I'd like to point out that Naperville has very different weather than Fresno. you are not going to be able to grow these outside year round.
The flowering size ones are more likely to survive if they suffer a setback, and the least expensive ones are likely to be among the easiest to grow.

the lutea was among the more expensive ones, but also the first one to bloom for me.
the omegaifera and heterochila were large tubers (for Ophrys), and among the cheapest on the list. (which is why I picked them in the first place). Another cheap one is incubacea, which I have not tried yet. A couple of the hybrids are also fairly cheap, and likely to be more tolerant of a range of conditions.

I'm looking over the list carefully, I think there might be a couple more I should try.

Mine are potted in a mix of about 70% perlite and 30% coco peat

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Yeah, I didn't realize Kevin was from Naperville, Illinois.

Ophrys are mostly Meditteranean orchids.

They've gotta be grown frost free. So during the winter, you gotta bring them indoors.

---------- Post added at 05:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:27 PM ----------

There's no minimum order btw.

Forgot to mention that.

You don't have to spend a fortune.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by King_of_orchid_growing:)

I tried growing them in what I thought was the correct soil mixture, (which it turns out wasn't quite right).

King and Kip,
If it helps for designing your mix, the air filled porosity of my terrestrial mixes is ~18%-20% for Corybas, ~24-26% for Caladenia and ~22-24% for everything else. I don't claim to be a particularly talented grower but these are the type of results I get on a good day.











---------- Post added at 01:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:42 AM ----------

Originally Posted by King_of_orchid_growing:)

Not very many people offer Thelymitra variegata for some odd reason.

I've tried a few related species and have found them very hard to grow for any length of time. I suspect the same is probably true of variegata itself.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by Andrew

King and Kip,
If it helps for designing your mix, the air filled porosity of my terrestrial mixes is ~18%-20% for Corybas, ~24-26% for Caladenia and ~22-24% for everything else. I don't claim to be a particularly talented grower but these are the type of results I get on a good day.

I'm sorry, I'm not quite understanding. Are you saying that there doesn't have to be too much air in the mix, that I can pack on more of the finer grained decomposed granite in relation to the granite chunks? Can you please elaborate?

---------- Post added at 10:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:30 AM ----------

For anyone interested in knowing how I grew Disa sagittalis, this is how I did it. (Now keep in mind, I don't really know the future of this guy, so I'm only mentioning this as I currently understand it to be, it could change down the line as my understanding of this plant changes...)

Disa sagittalis, yeah, it is a terrestrial, but I'm going to be far more specific here...

It is actually more of a lithophyte. They grow between rock crevices in the wild. The rocks they grow around is a rock called dolerite (if I'm not mistaken it is also regarded commonly as "sauna rocks").

Now, I'm not saying the rocks might be important, but what I want to impress on is this - these guys grow between rock crevices, and debris (which is mostly inorganic and is most likely something along the lines of decomposed granite) is caught in between these crevices.

So, really, Disas in general, should not be treated like a "terrestrial" that grows in organic soils. None of them really grow in organic soils at all. I've done a ridiculous amount of research on Disas, and not a whole lot of things in my research suggests that any Disa grows in organic type soils - they are all growing in mostly inorganic type soils.

So my mix is actually this:

1. Mostly granitic rocks. Specifically, it's what the sellers of rocks call "Palm Springs Gold".

2. Whatever amount of decomposed granite can fit into the crevices is whatever it is. And this really is not a whole lot of fine grained sand or silt.

Disa sagittalis specifically grows in moderately bright indirect light - not super bright light. Not all Disas grow in bright light.

When I water Disa sagittalis, I let it dry out completely. I mean, I let this thing dry out completely for days sometimes. That's because, yeah, you might read somewhere that they grow along streams like Disa uniflora does and all that jazz - but they really don't grow as close to the stream banks as Disa uniflora or Disa tripetaloides does. They grow further away from the water than these Disas do.

Like I said earlier, Disa sagittalis is a winter growing/summer dormant Disa. They grow cold - intermediate (36 F - 85 F, ideally). These cannot tolerate frosts. Disa sagittalis comes from lower elevations than, say, a Disa uniflora does. However, they can tolerate short bouts of moderate heat in the 90's F.

The general description of the environment many Disas come from is semi-arid desert. And they are South African plants.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by King_of_orchid_growing:)

I'm sorry, I'm not quite understanding. Are you saying that there doesn't have to be too much air in the mix, that I can pack on more of the finer grained decomposed granite in relation to the granite chunks? Can you please elaborate?

AFP is the percentage volume of air in a saturated potting mix and effectively measures the drainage of the mix. See this website for an example of how to measure it. As a reference point, commercial potting mixes are usually around 15-20% so my mixes are generally a little more free draining. You don’t want the drainage to be so low that you run into problems with a waterlogged mix but you also don’t want the mix to be so free draining that it dries out too quickly. You can of course water free draining mixes more often to compensate. However, I find Australian terrestrials tend to be quite responsive to temperature and moisture levels so if you don’t monitor how wet you mix is as the weather warms up, they can go prematurely dormant at the expense of the tubers. As for your granite mix, I don’t use decomposed granite so I can’t comment on how it behaves in a pot. My gut feeling is that it the gravel and decomposed granite mix might not hold on to enough water and there may not be much life in such an inorganic mix. I use about 30-40% very fine gravel and 60-70% fibrous organic material ie potting mix + leaf mould. I used to use clay loam + leaf and fine wood mulch but replaced the soil and wood mulch with a similar consistency potting mix as it was easier to get hold of.

I assume you grow the more available terrestrial species, like Pterostylis curta. How do these behave in your mix? Pterostylis curta isn’t the flashiest species but it’s a great plant for figuring out how to grow more challenging species. It doesn’t immediately die when you get the conditions wrong but when you get high multiplication and flowering rates, you know it’s time to expand out into other species.