Another collection gone
 

hello everyone, long time no post. sadly, this post is again tragic. I bought a greenhouse kit a month ago and put all my plants in there. they were doing great beacuase of the humidity. however, last week the temps in tucson dipped really low. where i live the temps were at 19 degrees. i had no idea they were going to drop so low because we were having 90 degree days. so i went to work that night and when i came home the next morning what i found was heartbreaking. everything was frozen. :( the plants had succumb to the icy temps and died since i didnt protect them. same with all the neighbors plants and on top of that broken water pipes :(( noone saw it coming.

so after having another incident where i BAKED all my plants in a greenhouse last summer and now freezing them this winter, i think im just going to stay away from greenhouses until i can get something bigger that wont change temps so drastically. il summer my plants outdoors and then bring them indoors. at least there were some survivors again which i will now tend to and will keep my passion alive.

i have them in my closet under some flourescent lighting. the question is, there are a couple of the so called "Dead" plants that still have greenish pbulbs or crowns. do you think they may come back with ALOT of tlc :) thanks. i hope my collection will grow again in the spring :biggrin:

its so eerie to see them frozen in time like how i left them but now dead: spike about to bud, growths maturing, and that vanda hanging just making new roots. sigh. :blushing: anyways, here are the survivors amongst them my fav cymbidium, a big den. aggregatum, and all my paphs. i guess theyre cold likers :) lets hope they make it.

A trick I learned when I had a small green house was a 50 gal water barrel full of rocks and painted black would hold a lot of heat through the nights ...water would do also not as good as a heater but It saved my plants several times here in South eats Mo. where it gets cold regularly..

Sorry to hear you lost you plants

Sorry to hear about your loss!

I have a Sensaphone that calls when the temperature is too low or too high. It has saved my collection more than once when the pilot went out on the heater.

Another collection gone
 

It isn't so much the size of your GH as it is having controls for heating and ventilation. This fall DH put in big shutters and an exhaust fan on a thermostat. He also fixed up a system to turn on the heaters when necessary. One heater comes on at 50 degrees and the second one at 40. And both the exhaust system and the heating system have come in handy this winter. We too have had very cold weather-low 20s- but today the sun shone and the shutters opened up and maybe the exhaust fan came on. I also have a big box fan that runs 24/7. My GH is only 12' x 16' and I take everything but the desert cactus outside in the summer. We also have a sensor in the house that indicates the temp in the GH, just in case...
You might need to consider shadecloth for summer if you cannot take your plants out.
Most portable electric heaters can be set to come on at a certain temp if you don't want to fool with electronic controls.
Anyhow, before you buy more plants or just give it up altogether, consider fixing up your heating and cooling first.
Beverly A.

What a shame :(

I think the Cym should be OK as they can go colder than some. Here's hoping the other survivors also make it :crossfing

Oh... that is a horrible sight! Sorry for your loss. It looks they were very pretty plants before freezing.

How heartbreaking to see all those orchids frozen! :bua: :bua: Hopefully you can get the survivors to hang on a bit and maybe recover. Really tough luck to have lost a lot of orchids twice.... I hope that's all the bad luck that you'll get.

Looks like one of those soft plastic greenhouses. Trouble with those is that the climate inside is very hard to regulate since there's no vents to cool it off in the summer, and they are also quite difficult to heat.

Wish you luck with the survivors, and don't give up on orchids!! :)

thanks to everyone. yeah it is hard to control but i had a fan in there before and i have a shade cloth and i have a misting hose for when it got hot but i wasnt there when it happened. had i known it wouldve gotten that cold i woulda protected them oh well. they say third times the charm right? lets hoping its true :) here the toughies warming up after a nice drink

What kind of greenhouse did you use? Sorry for the loss...

one of those plastic ones you can get anywhere. no brand. just tubes and plastic over it with a zipper door

I am very sorry you lost so many of your collection. I had one of those greenhouses. Used it for hardening off seedlings for the vegetable garden. Only survived one summer outside here in S. Oregon. The plastic just disintegrated. Maybe you could get
some T5 lights and grow your chids inside. good luck with the survivors. Must have been very sad coming home to that. Carol

Another collection gone
 

OK sounds like you have the hot days taken care of. Now you need to make arrangements for cold weather. Get a portable heater and figure out where to set it so it will come on at whatever temp. you think appropriate. Do this before you buy and murder any more orchids. Why hit yourself over the head any more (because it feels good when you quit?) :evil:
Beverly A.

My condolences :(

so sorry for your losses, but some may recover with care, trim away all the frozen black growth, as it will only provide a home for insects and bacteria/fungus....gl

I couldn't even bear to look at the pictures. I would have cried. But, here's to the survivors!

Hey rocks,

check your WTB classifieds. I have a some catt crosses that I have been nursing for the past 2 years. They could use a new home because I need the space. They were going to be thrown away originally and I just couldn't bear to see that. Some have names, some don't. Some have bloomed, some haven't but should this year. Most have new growths already.

OMG!! I'm so sorry. I once lost twenty tears of work when a hard drive failed. I was crushed. Your loss is much, much worse. Hopefully some will pull through. Good luck.