From: "Harvey Brenneise"
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.
I'm sure the water district for your area has its quality report online.
I'll bet it matches federal standards for hardness, pH etc. That said IMHO
you should probably look into a r/o system of some sort.
Interestingly, the IPA journal ('Phalaenopsis') has a nice biography of
Norman Fang, of Norman's Orchids, where he speculates about future
hybridization of orchids that are more tolerant of poor AIR quality. So
that is another factor to toss into the mix.
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).
Leave any yuou really care about with a friend. Take a few expendables with
yout to learn with. If they croak them you aren't out much. The disas may
make it but the cool growers probably won't. There's just not enough
ambient humidity.
I grew some disas (D uniflora hybrids) outside on my patio here in the
eastern SF Bay Area. ONCE ACCLIMATED I found they could take high temps as
long as they had cool nights AND are flushed daily with water, mimicing the
slow seep of water I imagine occurs on Table Mountain's seeps. I neglected
one or two days and they went kaput. But the idea is to keep the medium
always 'in solution'.
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?
Dennis Olivas, one of the best growers around here, will often recommend
this method for growing cool growers or wet growers. However I *believe* he
doesn't use the sand in between the pots. He stands the outer pot in
shallow water then places the inner pot. The inner pot is held up above the
standing water, the interstices between the pots holds cool moist air. I've
tried it with bulbophyllums with mixed results, however I'm not great at
keeping a reservoir filled.
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.
Acme Orchids in Ft Bragg, Ca used ground redwood bark as the basis for their
medium, which remains waterlogged for quite sometime. I tried them in coir,
with mixed results, however if one can get it unsalted enough that was a
very nice medium to work with.
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.
Good luck on your move. You'll be relearning how to grow.
K Barrett
N Calif, USA
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