phals and hanging baskets
 

OK since placing I think the largest orchid order I ever will (well unless I come into enough money to own and afford to maintain a greenhouse) buy. I'm trying to figure out how to redo my set-up. So far after losing a few to the move everyone seems to be settling into the new digs. Even my more stubborn chids have new leaf and root growth! I'm keeping an eye on a spot on my onc, it's looking weird, like maybe, just maybe, she's throwing up a spike!!! Keep your fingers crossed!! Only one seems to be still sulking, but not taking a turn for the worse.

With these new orchids coming in the next week or two I need some advice.

I'm talking with a window company about something my husband had promised me when we bought this house. To put a bay window in the bedroom for the eastern light there for my chids! Well the guy is coming on monday to see what we can do and how much it'll cost me. I hope it's not totally crazy high because I would LOVE to just put all my phals there and be happy happy!

But if this proves to be WAY to expensive I'm going to go with lights. I've never grown anything except tomato plants under lights, so I'm not sure exactly how to do this. But I will be researching it a lot!

But one solution for a few of the plants is to hang them in the bedroom, kitchen and bathroom windows. When I ordered the plants I also ordered baskets and some medium.

So what phals do best in baskets? I want to put my schilleriana in one since I love how they hang, but this is my problem orchid, she won't grow at all. She has some new roots below the medium, but no new leaves in over a year!!! No spike this year either. When I potted her after she bloomed when I got her her roots were really badly rotted. She was barely watered since I had her since she was in solid moss, so the damage must have happened in the greenhouse I bought her from. I'm scared to put her in a basket, but would she be better in one? She did lose over half her roots when I potted her in April.

Now I've seen some that look very nice in baskets, and a couple I bought says they do well in them. But are there any that really won't thrive? I do know this takes more work. I know I'll be misting them most every day and watering them probably double what I do now.

Is there any other things I need to do, watch out for, or avoid? I only plan on putting maybe 3-4 in baskets to keep down the work. My health isn't great, but caring for my orchids makes me happy. So it's not bothersome unless I'm having a bad day. Even then I'm able to go around and mist everyone and check to see their growth etc...

Phals in baskets?!?!? Why yes!!! They do very well in basket culture. And here's how you do it. Get your baskets (they can be made of many different materials), some long fibered New Zealand sphagnum moss and some wire to hang them with. I also like to get some of that decorative moss like Spanish moss. Put a thin layer of Spanish moss around the inside of the pot. This keeps the small pieces of sphagnum moss from dropping on your floor and shower. Then position your phal ( I like to pot multiple phals in each basket for different colors and a longer flowering period) in the pot and proceed to put in moss around the roots. Here's the secret (Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone) Do not pack the sphagnum moss tightly around the roots. Just lay it in loosely. That's the key. Lots of moisture or humidity around the roots while getting max air flow around them so they don't stay wet. No need to "mist" them daily. Or at all. The sphagnum moss will stay relatively moist for a couple days. And even if it dries out, the phals can take the dryness. I have seen large "balls" of phals potted this way where you couldn't see the basket for all the phals potted in it. Even hanging out the bottom. To water just put them in the shower. Place them on the floor of the shower and water for a minute or two. To fertilize, get a spray bottle full of fertilizer and wet the roots and moss. Very simple to do. Let them drain well in the shower and then hang them back up. Simple. One time I have 6 mini phals all in one wire basket and they bloomed sequentially over the whole year. All different colors. Really cool. I hope the person who bought it still has it.

Oh thank you thank you!!! This is just what I was hoping for! And you answered a question I was just going to ask! Can I put two in one basket!

I was going to just use the long spag moss I bought, but I never thought of using the decorative spanish moss to line it. I bought the baskets with the wire hangers along with the moss, so I'm all good with that part!

One problem though is we have village water now and it's about 10 times harder then our hard water when we weren't in the village. So our house has a water softener. I'm still not 100% on how to use the darn thing, two previous owners ago installed it I think, but I have read that softened water is a no-no for plants especially for orchids. Right now I'm using melted snow. In spring once our rain barrel is out I'll be using that. Can I just get a small watering can with smaller holes and use that over the kitchen sink? Can I put them in like a large stock pot and let them soak a bit? I worry that might rot the baskets out faster. I was going to just get the plastic ones, maybe I should have, but the wood ones look nicer. Especially since they're kind of on display in our bedroom.

Do you do the fert weakly weekly? That's what I'm doing now with everyone in pots.

I dip all of my orchids in a 5 gallon bucket. I fert weekly/weakly. I buy my water at the store from an RO machine out front. $.25 to $.35 a gallon. Works great.

I'll have to see if I can get RO water locally. We buy bottled water for our betta and it's now $.99 for regular water?!?!?

All my RO water comes from the Glacier Water machines in front of supermarkets and 7/11's. You refill your water bottles from them. Or a Britta filter might work.

We have a britta, but it's softened with a softener. Isn't that really bad for orchids?

It depends on what type softener you have. Do you filled it with rock salt? The Britta should take out the sodium.

---------- Post added at 04:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:04 PM ----------

You can also take the water out of the system before it reaches the softener. Your garden hose isn't hooked up to your softener.

Actually it is. But we're hiring a plumber to fix that this spring. But some orchids I have they say not to use hard water that rain water is better, so that's what I've been using since. It's kind of a pain to lug it but it's for their health. Our water is about 15GPG hardness, so it's too hard I think for orchids even off the softener. And yes it's filled with salt, not the salt free kind.

15 GPG is hard but what is the TDS and what minerals are causing the water to be hard. It does make a difference. If it is iron, no problem. If it is calcium or manganese or chloride it is a problem. And I wonder why the previous owners hooked all their spiqots to the softener.

It's bad calcium, lime and iron. We turned it off for a month just to see if we needed it (we wanted to get off the domestic coil and put in a water heater- the house is SUPER short on space for mechanicals) and our humidifiers gunked up worse then I've ever seen! Everything started acting funny. In just 3-4 weeks. Now our usage is low, so it's only regenerating every 15 days (which is it's maximum) and even on day 15 it's still real soft. So we're using only a small amt of salt, but you can still feel it and taste it. I hate the taste of the water. I like harder water, but it's just too bad here.

I have NO clue why he hooked up the outside!! Drives me nuts! Someone told me maybe he didn't want everything outside to turn red? Who knows?! But I don't want to be using it for my outside plants. But that same person said it's fine to water plants with softened water. But I don't believe him.

GardenGirl, our water softener is hooked up to the entire house and outside hose too.

I've only got about a dozen orchids so I've been buying the reverse osmosis (R/O) water in gallons from Rite-aid. I don't know where you live but some supermarkets like PriceChopper, Hannaford's and I think maybe WalMart too have the R/O machines. Ray here on the OB sells R/O systems that can go under your sink or on the counter top.
Systems First Rays

You're right down the road from me! I'll check out hannaford. How much is it at Rite-Aid? Do you do a lot of outside gardening? How do the plants handle it? We have rain barrels that we use a lot, but in dry weather we use the hose. We some plants which may or may not be more sensitive to the salt. Most of the garden web sites say not to use softened water.

Softened water
 

Not all Hannaford's have it, so call first. The rainwater would be my first choice. Our outdoor plants don't seem to mind the softened water much, they all appear healthy, but we don't do that much supplemental watering. The Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) right now of our water is 165 ppm. Do some reading at Rays website to learn more about the TDS.
https://www.firstrays.com/free_info.htm

The softened water did not kill my orchids, I even got a phal to bloom, but they didn't really thrive. With my wellness card at RiteAid the bottled R/O water (they call it purified water) costs about $1.03 per gallon. Sometimes it is on sale for 85 cents. It's in gallon containers. You could also use distilled water. If you use pure water you will have to add some calcium and magnesium to the water as a supplement.

If you live in the area you could stop by and check out the Mid-Hudson Orchid Society that meets one Sunday a month in Newburgh. Billc on here is a member too.
http://www.mhos.us.com

Yeah Bill told me about it. I was going to see about going to the sale this past weekend but every time I clicked on the site it came up with a 404 error. So I couldn't find out more info aside from the date. hindsight I should have just pm'd bill.

Problem is it's about an hour drive from me, and I don't do well in long car rides. Then sitting on a folding chair might just kill me! ha ha!! No finding any cool orchids at Adams this morning is upsetting me! I was so looking forward to finding a couple. I'm selling two that just won't flower for me, so I'm replacing them with Adams plants. They sometimes have great ones, only NoIDs today. But they restock often.

Where did you get your TDS tested? There's a place who does water testing in Hyde Park but they charge $25 and their hours for drop off aren't very convenient to get to. I even called around to the pool people and they don't test. I guess I could see about the local water softener people or sears?

GG13, why sell the orchids you can't get to flower? Just bring them here and we'll help you flower them. Easy to do.

I got the TDS meter from Amazon... It's inexpensive and has good ratings... I'm not a scientist so it's good enough for me.

HM Digital TDS-EZ Water Quality TDS Tester, 0-9990 ppm Measurement Range, 1 ppm Resolution, +/- 3% Readout Accuracy - Amazon.com

Tried. I researched them, did everything they said to do and nothing. For years. I have a buyer already. The one I didn't like, it was fun, but I'm not really a paph kind of girl. I like a few but not many. The other was a broken off bit of a catt, needs much more light then I can give it, so it's sold, and is being replaced with a catt that says can handle window culture. fingers crossed!

We have 5 hannafords within a 20ish mile radius, hopefully one has one. I think I'll only keep a little bit on hand with the rain barrel goes dry.

I have the pots packed in moss within the basket. Because the moss keeps it shape, when I water I can just slide the pot right out. This way you can get the effect of multiple orchids in a hanging basket without the roots rotting from being in too large of a basket/pot.