A plug for Casa de las Orquideas

[MN Tomato]

All of the Californians probably know about them already, but from what I have heard, in California you can wander out to any random garage sale and find giant pots of blooming cymbidiums for a song. For the lonely Midwestern cymbidium fans (There are dozens of us! Dozens!) the pickings are a bit slimmer. You! I know you are out there! Order from Casa de las Orquideas. They will ship you nice things.

Up until my Casa order I had one NOID standard cymbidium, acquired from a local florist/nursery in 2013 as part of a "blooming plant arrangement". I have never seen any other cymbidium in the Minneapolis/St Paul metro nurseries, not even that one it originally came from. I can recommend Casa de las Orquideas despite the little extra bit of difficulty (they do not have an online store) and will buy from them again, probably this spring. I would like to order from their six-inch list this time, so if those of you who know cymbidium breeding better have any recommendations, feel free to chime in! Casa de las Orquideas Online: 6-inch seedling list

That's the TLR. Below is the longer cymbidium saga, if you are interested! It will substitute for my introduce yourself page which I don't remember if I ever posted.

I have fond memories of a chic French style brass-and-wood cafe from my student days in Athens that was adorned with massive tubs of blooming standard cymbidiums every winter, and I have always wanted to recreate it. This is a challenge in Minnesota, and to add to this, I don't really have a budget for full-sized blooming plants. What I do have is a lot of patience and thanks to Orchidboard, some practice in growing my one NOID cymbidium lush and now also blooming regularly.

I ordered from Casa in November 2022, because when the garden is killed off by the fall freeze, I do dumb things like browse epiphyllum cuttings and orchids on Etsy and ebay (Minnesotans will understand the beginning of winter is not the greatest time to buy either of these from warm places). I was tempted by the low cost "mystery cymbidium seedling" offers on Etsy, but was a little leery. Casa de las Orquideas is well known and has a very clear virus policy, which I liked. I had also benefitted from their excellent and well illustrated culture pages, especially the one on repotting cymbidiums: Basic Cymbidium Repotting

They do not have an online store, but you can see their catalogue online, and then send in an order by email and call with your credit card number. There is a minimum order for shipping, and since I wanted a variety but am not yet enough of a connoisseur to know about breeding, I emailed and asked if they could collect an appropriate number of 3-inch seedlings of any type (I needed 7 for the minimum and there were only 5 I think listed at the time). Karl found for me seven 3-inch seedlings, and then I added one 6-inch seedling to get a pink/red.

They ship with UPS and everything came beautifully packed in a long box; it took me half an hour to take off all the masking tape and newspaper. (Although they shipped on Monday and it was supposed to arrive by Thursday, UPS messed up somehow and the box spent a weekend in a truck in the Minneapolis distribution center. Temperatures unexpectedly plunged into the 20s on Friday and didn't go above 32 the whole weekend. But luckily they are cymbidiums and survived this.)

The plants look good and sturdy, and are all showing fresh growth now despite their move from cozy sunny California to a dry house in Minnesota winter. In spring they should do well. They were bug free (there were a few scale scars but the plants were clean) and are potted in coco chips which I am still adjusting to -- I have been using bark and cypress mulch for mine. I can recommend Casa de las Orquideas and will buy from them again, probably this spring. I'm gonna get me a Cym erythrostylum from Hausermann too, if it's still there by March.

Maybe we can start a Forlorn Midwesterners Cymbidium thread. I know I have seen a couple of mentions here on the forums but I don't know if those folks are still around.