Gifted a Brlla, what do I do?!

[ValorieBoyer]

I went to my very first AOS meeting and they gave me a Brlla. Tahoma Glacier 'Ithan', which is beautiful but I've no idea what light/water/humidity requirements it needs. Help!

[silken]

Wow, nice gift. It is in the Oncidium group and takes regular Oncidium care. Medium light, good drainage for the potting medium which could be fine bark and some moss or coconut husk chunks or similar. Allow to come close to dry but not dry out completely. They have finer roots than Cattleyas or Phals for example. That's how I grow mine and they seem to do OK.

[ValorieBoyer]

Originally Posted by silken

Wow, nice gift. It is in the Oncidium group and takes regular Oncidium care. Medium light, good drainage for the potting medium which could be fine bark and some moss or coconut husk chunks or similar. Allow to come close to dry but not dry out completely. They have finer roots than Cattleyas or Phals for example. That's how I grow mine and they seem to do OK.

Right now it's sitting in my greenhouse with my Phals, but I've moved it so it's also next to the window so it has the grow-light as well as the window light, so hopefully that's enough to make it happy for now. I've already been wanting to get another grow light to give my Phals more light, this is a good excuse to go ahead and get it!

[RandomGemini]

You send it to ME, because it's gorgeous! What an excellent door prize!

I use a medium to fine bark mix for these. Better Gro special mix from Home Depot or Lowe's. It has charcoal in it and I find the slightly larger pieces of bark provide more air flow around the roots, but a variety of sizes of bark seems to be grabbed better by the roots, so I will put the larger chunks in the center when I repot. I usually mix in some of the better gro phal mix too, which has CHC and perlite in it, for better water retention.

Do NOT repot this while it's in bloom. It will drop all of its blooms on you. You should repot it when the blooms have dropped, only under the following conditions (unless some emergency circumstance requires a repot, of course): 1. The spikes are gone. 2. You have a new pbulb growing. 3. You see new roots growing out of the newest pseudobulb.

I don't use the skewer method with these. After watering them for a month or so, you will get a sense of when the pot feels light or even very light. I pick up the pots on my plants and if I think they are in the "light" stage, but not quite to "very light" I water. I fertilize them with one quarter strength fertilizer once weekly and other than that, they seem to grow pretty well for me.

Hope this helps!

[silken]

Sounds good. I had to re-arrange some of my orchids this past fall and several of my Oncidiums are getting less light than I would ideally give them. But I have spikes on a couple of them. So I think they are fairly tolerant of different light conditions.