"Twenty years ago, Allan Stein and Richard Wilkerson bought a house on a lake in Palmetto Bay... with grass. Today, that half-acre of grass has become a tropical garden... their plants are protected by a microclimate created by the towering palms..
Wilkerson, 62, retired five years ago from the Division of Plant Inspection of the United States Department of Agriculture in Miami... Hurricane Andrew in 1992 removed an orchid house and hundreds of orchids collected by Wilkerson over two decades. ''The greatest lesson I learned from Andrew was the resiliency of nature,'' Wilkerson says. ``I was so traumatized about my orchids, I called friends and said take the hundred or so that were left. But about three months later, I saw that those that had been attached to trees were coming back.'' Four or five years after Andrew, Wilkerson decided to grow orchids once more, but chiefly on the trunks of palms. He has dozens of Phalaenopsis hybrids [too bad they not species / smile...] flowering... on palms... He puts some sphagnum moss around their roots, and protects them with a covering of screening. In short order, the orchids send their roots beneath the screening onto the trunk, attaching themselves securely. Some of these phals [phalaenopsis] have been in flower since December. ... Wilkerson... uses 20-20-20 water-soluble fertilizer once a month on the orchids" article URL : http://www.miamiherald.com/331/story/65681.html ************* Happy Easter / Joyeuses Paques / Felices Pascuas / Wesolych Swiat !!! Regards, VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
