dividing psychopsis

[Leafmite]

It depends on your conditions how wet to keep it but it is not necessary to keep them constantly wet. I have my Mendenhall 'Hildos' in large red lava rock and a basket pot...for the past five years, ever since I bought it as a seedling with leaves no bigger than my thumb nail. I water it often but it does dry out in between. As for light, mine seems to grow no matter what light I have given it. I do not think they are all that fussy, at least at the seedling stage. Mine hasn't quite gotten large enough to start blooming, judging on the size of the leaves (the pretty leaves are the reason I bought mine, anyway...and, it was so adorable as a tiny seedling).

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

I usually consider intermediate temperatures to run down to 50 F - 55 F. So if you consider that wrong, then maybe it is.

I also seem to recall that both of us mentioned bark as a potting medium, so again, if I'm wrong, then maybe you're wrong too, idk...

Bright indirect light for me, (Los Angeles, CA), might be full sun for you, (Wisconsin), so I don't really see an argument, as both are pretty bright light. Maybe if we provided actual numerical information, the advice probably wouldn't be too far off from eachother.

The only thing we differ on would be how wet the orchid grows. And even then, not by much, so I really don't know what's the rub. To think about it, you're probably getting away with growing the Psychopsis as wet as you are because you're growing it under full sun in Wisconsin, which probably means the evaporation rate is most likely very high, so it probably might not even be sopping wet in there, idk.

I don't why this all of a sudden became so personal. Differing opinions get expressed all the time, but yet there's so much anger being thrown this direction when I didn't really say anything radically different from you.

Maybe if I told him to grow Psychopsis bone dry, (which I didn't), then you'd probably have every right to look at me cockeyed and call me out on it.

And for the record, I posted my advice not in an effort to discredit what you had said, express nor implied. If it sounded like such, that wasn't the intention.

It's exceptionally clear it's not what was said that was so upsetting, but rather it was how it was presented and/or interpreted.

So, I'm going to take ownership of my own blunder, and maybe if there is/was a real desire to have me change the way I post messages on the OB, let's put it out on the table...

What's the real rub? I don't deserve to be someone's punching bag when I essentially gave similar advice.

[Daethen]

I really didn't think I was calling you out on anything. Just surprised that our advice sounded so different to my ear and yet I am having success. Sometimes a person HAS success when doing things totally wrong. Obviously I am not doing things wrong for my conditions. And I am sorry if I sounded like I was punching you as I didn't mean to.

[camille1585]

I guess that what Philip says is the general Psychopsis culture that will work for mostly everyone, but then everyone has different conditions, and can stray from the guidelines but still get nice results. Keeping it nearly constantly wet sounds like the plant may have adapted much in the way that plants adapt to S/H culture.

I also do something that many people would say I'm doing very wrong. About a year ago I changed the way I water. At every watering I simply pour some water through the pots and let it partially fill the saucer. There's enough water there that the pots are sitting in water for for about 3 days, until the medium has absorbed it all (and some evaporates). My Phals in particular quite like it, and they've put out a lot of growth this year. I know a lot of people will strongly disagree with me, but this works for me, in my conditions. The alternative is underwatering, because I don't have time to spend hours each week soaking all the orchids!

[Daethen]

Camille, I do the same thing! They really seem to love me for it. I have 6 plants that have never bloomed for me before that are putting out spikes and a total of 18 in various stages of blooming. May not seem like a lot but I have 105 total and many of them are seedlings. I am thrilled!! I also use clay pots so I think that the extra water prevents them from over drying.

---------- Post added at 08:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:08 AM ----------

I also have good light and constant air flow now so this is another reason that I think they can handle the extra water.

[lepetitmartien]

I grow my 3 Psychopsis in a small basket, with sphag and perlite, and watering is done by wetting thourougly then letting dry dry, usually by leaving a cm or two of water in the cup under and let it absorb it.

For culture, what is good for indoor doesn't work for GH, what we do in temperate countries is different from sub tropical or tropical zones. Even in supposedly same conditions not everything do work the same… So it's better to be cautious and accept diverging opinions on what to do, there's usually not one solution for culture, but multiple ones you have to choose from.

[Paul]

Things like this are why it is always good to caution people -- newbies in particular -- against taking cultural advice as though it were written in stone. (That there can be several very different routes to success is also what seems to drive many newbies up the wall. Quite understandable that, as when we start something new we want to "do it right". )

Reminds me of a woman I knew who grew a very nice Dendrobium loddigessii. Contrary to popular convention, she grew it wet year-round in a pot. (Believe she just used a regular bark mix.) Her growing area was in her basement. Not only did it grow very well for her, it bloomed beautifully too.

Philip, like Jonada, I took her comments to just be her surprise that her methods were so very different than yours. I saw no anger on her part. Chalk this up to simply being another case in which the typed word can lead to misunderstanding as it is often a poor carrier of the emotional nuances present in the spoken word and body language.