Classic goofs

[UserName]

Cat.

Now the room with blooming orchids is The Forbidden Room.

[AnonYMouse]

It's a dry summer dormancy, not the usual winter dormancy!

[Leafmite]

Originally Posted by AnonYMouse

It's a dry summer dormancy, not the usual winter dormancy!

To which orchid are you referring?

[AnonYMouse]

Originally Posted by Leafmite

To which orchid are you referring?

This one.

[Leafmite]

What a fantastic orchid! I loved the pictures. Good luck with it!

Another mistake I have made....
When I first started growing orchids, I never used a commercial fertilizer. I always used my pond water during spring through autumn with all my plants and the orchids were added to the pond-water list. The orchids thrived for many years this way, as all my plants did. In the pond, I grew lotus and lilies and the pond tablets I used at the time had calcium added to them. When our family became too busy to enjoy the pond, I broke it down, gave away the fish, two lotus and lilies and started a tub pond. No longer having the vast resource of pond water, I switched to distilled and rain water with the addition, for the first time, of an orchid fertilizer I had bought. My mistake? Believing that the orchid fertilizer had everything needed to grow healthy orchids. Ha ha. That autumn, I believe either 2006 or 2007, I had the mysterious 'Black Plague'. It mainly hit the Cattleyas (but not all of them) and, mostly, my favorite Cattleyas. My new growths turned black and it would spread quickly through the rest of plant. I managed to save a few with cutting and faithful alcohol swabbing. My research yielded nothing until I was reading my houseplant book and it suggested Calcium deficiency. I started adding Calcium and I have not had any issues since. I am still looking for replacements of two of the Cattleyas I loved and lost. I hope that no one else ever needs to go through something like this, the reason I am always recommending adding Calcium.

[Dollythehun]

And u am grateful for your advise. Cal Mag for all! Cheers!

[jcec1]

Just trimmed off a phalaenopsis spike when cutting off a leaf. Check the scissors before making the snip.

[rbarata]

I began my collection maybe 4 years ago and it's still relatively small.
Although I have gone through reppoting problems, pests an other challenges, I haven't made any mistakes worth of being mentioned here.
I don't take any credit for it 'cause they all go to the excelent advise I get from this forum.

[AnonYMouse]

Tiny tuberette down the drain. Literally.

[estación seca]

You can probably retrieve it. I've done it on a number of occasions. Don't use the sink.

It's not at all hard to use one or two long-handled wrench(es) to undo the U-shaped trap and retrieve the tuber. Put a large basin under the trap to catch the water still in the U-trap, unscrew both large faceted attachment rings on either side of the U trap, and ease it out of the two straight pipe pieces. Find your tuber. Clean out the U-trap, then reattach.

This is a very low-pressure system, so the faceted attachment rings don't have to be tightened very much.

I've retrieved a lot of seeds this way. So many that I've replaced my U-traps and attachment rings with plastic ones that have large flanges to make it possible to unscrew them with my hands.