Just popping in to say hi

[camille1585]

I've been mostly absent from the forum for a while, and thought I'd pop in with an update. This year has been a tough one so far, due to health scares in my family and having a pretty rough time at work lately.

Normally I'd count on my orchids for mental sanity, but I get zero joy from them anymore. I've come to the hard realization that I'm going to have to trash most of my collection and start over. I have one or several diseases which have spread through many plants, and it is completely my fault. I am quite diligent about not sharing water when I soak the plant (they have individual containers), but dumping out the used water and refilling with clean water for the next plant is not enough and the containers were likely still contaminated.

I've reached that conclusion since most of the healthy plants are those which have the own personal containers (only used for that 1 plant) for soaking.

From the ones which share containers, nearly all my Phals, Dens and vandaceous orchids are affected. I've already tossed out over 20 plants and now I've reached the hard part and have to get rid of plants which were hard to find and/or costly, or which have sentimental value. Luckily several of my very favorites are in the "personal soaking container group", but it doesn't make it any easier.