Miltoniopsis culture success

[Cheoah]

I think miltoniopsis may be my favorite genera. They’re prolific and fragrant, and I’ve developed the conditions they want. Once that’s done, they thrive. There a a few observations beyond this I’ll list below.

Mine are in my basement, where humidity stays in the 50’s. I run a humidifier during the cold periods, when furnace is running and high pressure drops the Rh outdoors.

Temps are 62-75 f. I use a heat mat on timer to increase daytime temps. I have several 2x4’ mats.

Led lights work great, but it is easy to overdo it. Not in a single episode, but cumulatively. The light may be 800 fc or less, but it stays that intense for all 12 hours, easily exceeding the optimal Daily Light Integral (DLI). I had to figure this out on my own; lighting discussions are generally very basic, referencing fc or lux, or maybe PAR. Thus my confusion when 14 hours at 600 fc was causing light stress. I use 48” tubes, T5, mix of white tubes mostly. I add one tube w some reds to each set, but this does not produce the purple light that I dislike. Makes it hard to enjoy your orchids, or manage them, for lack of seeing. They also do fine in an eastern window for me, but I’m really pushing them.

Mine are potted in hydro baskets with sphag. I water before it’s crunchy. Root growth is prolific, they come out to the edge of the basket but generally dive into the moss. I water with 100 ppm, 7.0 well water, but light fert drops it below 6.5. Flushing regularly is key with this method. I’ve been too lax and need to do every month for nice specimens.

Accordion leaves happen even in optimal conditions. I think when being pushed w light and fert especially. It seems that new growths blow up and roots are a bit behind. Especially when they get caught in the leaf bases. I spend more time tending to maturing leaves or remnants and tear them off so that roots can easily reach the moss. I think this is a cause of crinkled leaves, when roots are delayed reaching medium and rh is lower than optimal.

It’s common for new buds to get trapped in tightly folded leaves, stunting them or even causing a bud to rot. I think this also contributes to discolored edges on the petals, where they turn brown, w dark spots. Maybe botrytis or some other fungal problem. This has happened with a couple of hybrids, not really sure what’s up.

Hope this helps someone else. Try your air conditioned basement, keep them moist, avoid direct sun except early morn eastern. The temp differential helps, I use heat mats for this.

Sorry no pics, not enough posts here, but I’ve also kind of given up since photobucket, and no Tapatalk.

Cheers!

[richardb]

If you take a look at the International Odontoglossum Alliance website Home then look at the Affiliated Groups dropdown you will see newsletters from Miltoniopsis New Zealand.
There is a lot of interesting and helpful content in those newsletters.

[Asca]

Mine sent up 4 spikes in early fall. I got hung up on the cool growing part and had them in a window sill, with no direct sunlight. They exploded with new growth once I simply put them in with the rest of the orchids under LED grow lights, with a mean temp of 30 C. So far I haven't had any wrinkling of the leaves since, though run a small sonic humidifier and there are a lot of other plants so the min humidity at the level of the LEDs is around 50% RH, at plant level I've had it as high as 98%.