Germination of Bletilla!

[Pseudo-Scientist]

Congrats.
I just got six flasks of bletilla I got back from a flasking service. I wish I were as adventurous as you.

[Zozzl]

Pseudo-Scientist,

I am so NOT adventurous I just got inspired by the rest of the folks on the propagation forum and decided to give a try. It is not hard at all but it seems like a lot of folks think it is.

I am wondering if there would be interest in starting another thread on this forum and maybe call it 'Flasking 101' and just start with the first step in flasking, and everyone could put in their 2 cents and make sure everyone who wanted to try it got all their questions before we moved on to the next step.

I know there is a lot of info available but I think maybe people find it daunting to put it all together.]

Anyway, if the experts (yous guys) would be willing to offer your expertise I will start another thread and will can decide what the first step to discuss would be.

Whaddyathink?

Pat

[Royal]

Good idea. I'm no expert - just an adventurous orchid nut with a twist of mad scientist, but I would try to help any way I could.

The trick here would be to understand from the start that there are countless styles and techniques to achieve the same goal. Sometimes we even use similar techniques to achieve a very different goal. In order to keep the thread from being bombarded with off-topic questions or philosophical discussions, we'd need to clearly state the purpose of the thread and lay down a few ground rules first. This could turn out to be pretty awesome.

[Zozzl]

Royal,

Thanks for your enthusiasm I agree we need ground rules and need to stay on topic to get through it all. I think if we keep focused on each step we could get through it pretty quickly and then there would be a complete guide for beginning flasking and folks could print it out. I know when I started collecting information some of it was so technical that I just skipped it and went on to the next site and it was a bit of a pain trying to find instructions for each step of the way that was not too complicated.

Personally, I would like to see very easy techniques using as much equipment that folks are already likely to have and doing it as economically as possible. We could post photos too. Having different techniques would be great so people pick out the one they are most comfortable with and try it out.

I was thinking that possibly the first step might be going over media and container preparation as they can order their seeds and make their boxes after the flasks are prepared.

Do you think we should just go ahead and start a new thread or discuss it here further?

Pat

[Royal]

I think you should start it whenever you are ready. After thinking about it more, maybe we should start with a brief overview of the whole process in simple language, focusing on the reason for each step. After about a page (10 posts), you come back in as a sort of moderator and prompt us to move on to describing individual steps, taking about 10 posts per step.

You should describe the purpose and audience (101 = beginners) for the thread right up front and ask that posting be limited to those with any level of hands on experience. Maybe even ask to limit the size of each post to keep everything concise and understandable. It'll morph into it's own thing anyways, just get it going and see what happens.