I have just been hired at the University of La Verne, and will be moving to the L.A./Inland Empire area later this month. From those in the area (you can reply off-list, if you like), please advise as to best practices, particularly around water quality (in Seattle, it's mostly relatively untreated river water or rain water from my roof), and heat.
The irony of this move is that while in Seattle I've been building up my collections of cool growers, including masdevalias and disas. Now I may live on the edge of the desert (OOH, I will finally be able to grow those genera that require heat and/or light, which has been hard both in Seattle and Michigan). I saw something in the National Geographic that intrigued me relative to plant cooling. There is a pratice used in the Sahara in which they keep food cool by placing it inside a clay jar that has been placed inside another clay jar with damp sand between the two clar jars. It seems that the evaporative cooling keeps the content cool. I was wondering if perhaps a similar technique could be used on cool-growing orchids to at least keep the roots cool. Any comments? As an aside, from what I've observed at Wally Orchard's place near Olympia as well as my own growing here in Seattle, it appears that disas like to be not only wet, but waterlogged (similar to some phrags, I think)--high quality water, of course, in both cases. I suppose this should come as no surprise, really, given that many of same grow on stream banks. I'm wondering if placing disas in clay pots using DE or some form of moss as the medium and placing that in a shallow tray of water might just do the trick in a warm climate. I hate to give up the disas. It will be a complicated move, with plants still in Michigan and a greenhouse here in Seattle. There don't appear to be many basements in southern CA (no surprise there), except in hillside homes or older homes, which is a pity given their greater temperature buffering by the earth. Harvey Brenneise in a wet Seattle [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
