May you grow boldly and bloom freely in the coming year!

Sc. Fairyland 'Hawaii'

We’ve got everything picked, unpacked, sorted and ready for this weekend’s sale!  There will be some real treats this weekend.  Here a just a few highlights out of over 200 orchids:

• Vanda Mimi Palmer with many keikis which can be divided or left on for a beautiful specimen
• Many exotic new Lady Slipper orchids we’ve never had before with long twisty petals
• Dtps Leopard Prince, a white and purple phalaenopsis, with a 4 foot tall spike–this one will make a dramatic showpiece
• Many gorgeous oncidiums, like:
  

  Beallara Purple Haze 'Jimi Hendrix'

• Blue Dendrobiums

Den. Betty Gotto hybrid

Lovely fragrant miniature cattleyas 

Lc. Secret Love x Enc. cordigera

Hope to see you there!

Karla tells us:

The blooms on this orchid are so perfect and pretty, they almost don’t look real.

The sun peeked through the clouds last evening, so I set the orchid outside in my annual bed to get a few pictures in the good light.

 

Karla's Cattleya

Orchid club member Wes shares the story of his very first paphiopedilum.  Take a look at this gorgeous white lady slipper–that is one healthy orchid!

 

This is the first lady slipper orchid that I every purchased. I have had it for about three years now and it has bloomed about five times. This time I was surprised to find it was trying to produce two blossoms. The first picture shows the second blossom lagging behind the first blossom.

 

The second picture shows the first one opening with the second progressing, but still behind.

 In the third picture we see second blossom opening about two weeks after the first blossom had opened.

 

Who wouldn’t be thrilled with such beautiful blooms?  But Wes has even more rewards awaiting him:

And finally in the fourth picture we see the ‘out of focus’ double blossoms to the left of the picture, but on the opposite side of the plant we have beginnings of a new blossom. I think after these blooms are complete I will try to divide my first lady slipper.

Way to grow, Wes!  Congratulations on such a happy, healthy orchid.  Thank you for sharing these photos!  When you can’t find room in the windowsill for all those divisions, think of me.

Have you ever tried to repot a new orchid and discovered a virtual insectary in the old pot?  Orchids attract all sort of bugs.  Little root destroying snails seem to be the most common pot hitchhikers.  We talk often in Orchid Club about battling scale and mealybugs–when you can see them on the leaves, the media in the pot is also probably full of them. 

Personally, I tend to be a bit squeamish and prefer a take-no-prisoners approach to bugs.  But when you are growing orchids in your home, it’s not always a good idea to haul out the heavy chemicals.  When I decided to move some of my orchids outside for the summer, I knew I had to be prepared for the bug battle.   I was especially worried about earwigs like the creepy little guy at the top–our town is infested with them.  While it is a myth that they burrow into your ears, two things are certain about earwigs:  They love dark damp places like the spaces in orchid bark and when they get hungry, no flower is spared.  Last year they ate every blossom from my clematis and begonias, and mowed torenia and even marigolds clean off at the ground.   I knew I would need something that I could use often to keep the earwigs out of my pots. I wanted something cheap and non-toxic but effective.

Dish soap is an old timey insecticide that is especially useful for controlling spider mites.  We often talk about using rubbing alcohol for killing and cleaning off scale and mealies.  And orchidists frequently recommend rubbing regular ground cinnamon onto fresh cuts on orchids because it speeds drying and acts as an antifungal.  This recipe combines the best of all three ingredients into an effective all-purpose pest killer.  I mostly use it in a spray bottle, but it is cheap enough to pour through the pot or dunk.  It gets bonus points for smelling great.   Cinnamon extract is a liquid and can be found in the grocery store baking aisle next to the spices and vanilla.

10 drops dishsoap

1/2 tsp. cinnamon extract

2 TBS. rubbing alcohol

2 cups tepid water

If you want more safe ideas for products to use on your orchids, check out First Rays Home Remedies.

At least that’s how it started for me and many orchid growers I know.   At first I bought whatever I could find at the home improvement stores. These were quite often suffering root rot before I even took them home due to being stuffed in soggy sphagnum moss in tight undrained pots and watered haphazardly by store employees who didn’t know any better.  Luckily, I didn’t keep track of how many I killed at first. I began to wonder if other kinds of orchids might be happier in my house.  Then I saw dendrobiums advertised in the grocery store circular!  By this time I realized it was a good idea to repot orchids right away and luckily I did–unpotting that first Dendrobium was like going on an archaeology expedition.  It had never had old media removed but was simply “potted up” with new media thrown around the side,  so I got to dig through 4 layers of different kinds of root-killing soggy mess.

Our local greenhouses had about the same selection of Phalaenopsis, but I kept looking.  I’ll never forget spying “something different” in the orchid section at the garden center–I really wanted to take it home.  It looked healthy enough but it was out of bloom, had no identification label and a $70 price tag.  I had no idea what kind of orchid it was or what kind of care it needed, so I reluctantly walked away.  (It’s still there, almost 18 months later.  The price has come down some, but even after all the orchids I’ve seen and all the reading I’ve done I still can’t guess even what genera it is.)

I tried purchasing orchids online.  Sometimes this worked ok, but many times the orchids were tiny and fragile–just barely out of the propagation flask and years away from blooming size.  Others arrived with health issues that were impossible to detect when shopping because the seller didn’t show photos of the actual plant they sent me.  At best, the good plants I got online were old enough for their first blooming. 

But I kept trying to find a reliable way to get healthy orchids that would reward my attention with growth and blooms.  And then I discovered the Sioux Falls Orchid Club Show & Sale. . .

WOW.

Orchids of all kinds were huge, healthy and loaded with blooms.   Different types of orchids than I had seen available anywhere in our area.  Orchids so healthy they were growing right out of their pots with 6 to 10 blooming spikes–the size I had jealously watched sell online for well over $100.    The selection was truly amazing.  The club members were so friendly and helpful–they patiently answered my questions and helped me select. . .well . . .too many new orchids to discuss in polite company.   Since then, I have walked out of each Sioux Falls Orchid Club sale with a box full of gorgeous beauties.

After my long saga of trying to find healthy, mature reasonably priced orchids I couldn’t believe my luck right here in Sioux Falls! 

SPOILER ALERT:  Some of the orchids at our shows are grown right here in South Dakota.  Others are hand selected for us by club members who count among their friends some of the world’s finest orchid growers from Hawaii and Florida.  If you think I am exaggerating about the quality of orchids we will have available, here is just a small sample of some selected during a recent buying trip for this fall’s sale:

   Most of us are aware that Australia has a wealth of wildlife and is home to many unique and bizarre species of animals and plants. But did you know that orchids are also very prolific in Australia?

In Australia there are between 1,200 and 1,400 orchid species with 80 per cent of these not found anywhere else in the world.A number of these also have some extremely specialised adaptations not seen elsewhere in the orchid family. For example two species of native orchids spend their entire life-cycle underground,and many ground orchids from southern Australia have become so specialised that they deceive and lure the males of a single species of insect to their flowers to ensure pollination

  About an hour’s drive west of Melbourne, Australia in the state of Victoria is a natural wonderland filled with unique geology and a great variety of wildlife, known as the Brisbane Ranges National Park. In addition to scenic hiking, rock climbing and a large koala population, the Brisbane Ranges is particularly noted for its wildflowers, featuring almost 700 plant species. Over 100 different orchids have been recorded in the park.

Set in a low range of mountains dissected by rocky gullies, the unusual geology of Brisbane Ranges National Park has preserved plants that have long since vanished from the region, together with a correspondingly diverse bird population as well as Koalas, Wallabies and Kangaroos.

   Cathy Powers is fortunate to live in the Brisbane Ranges, just outside the national park. Cathy was born in South Dakota and moved to Australia in 1976. She developed an interest in terrestrial orchids about 10 years ago and began photographing them in earnest in 2003. She has traveled far and wide to capture the beauty of native orchid species and the amazing results can be seen on her website Banjorah.com.

   Cathy is an experienced speaker and a dedicated conservationist. She writes, “I am a member of the Australasian Native Orchid Society (both Victoria and Geelong). I am also a member of the Friends of the Brisbane Ranges and a committee member of the Brisbane Ranges Wildflower Show (held again in October 2011). I am President of the Australian Plants Society Victoria and the treasurer of our local district group (APS Melton & Bacchus Marsh).   I conduct PowerPoint presentations to various community groups on subjects such as the Brisbane Ranges, Fungi, Terrestrial Orchids, Plants & Pollinators, Digital Photography and various themes within these areas. My topic for your meeting is ‘Biodiversity & the Brisbane Ranges’.

   It will be such a treat to have Cathy as a guest speaker at this Saturday’s Orchid Club meeting. Don’t miss the chance to hear more about this fascinating region and its amazing orchids.  For more meeting details, click here.

Sources:
Friends of Brisbane Ranges
Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research
Banjorah.com

I am working on another post, so check back here for more information on the Brisbane Ranges. It’s a beautiful and fascinating place.

I’ve rebloomed phalaenopsis and dendrobium before, but this is the first time that I’ve had a cattleya bloom from a new growth that developed entirely in my care. I’ve had this plant for about 8 months and this is its second blooming. The 4 flowers this time are larger–about 3 inches across.

We also discussed some ways to improve this site. At nearly every orchid club meeting you can find a group of members huddled around the viewscreen of someone’s digital camera or cell phone, trying to admire blooms or decipher culture problems. We love to share images of our orchid triumphs and trials and it isn’t easy to do on a 1.5 inch screen. We decided to start member photo posts here on the sforchidclub blog. If you have images you would like to share of your own orchids, please attach them to an email and send to me at tldriesen@gmail.com with a brief description.

Another great idea is to allow Sioux Falls Orchid Club Members to advertise orchids or orchid related items via this site. It has been used that way informally in the past and we would like to have a more central listing of any items you have for sale or trade. This would be a members-only benefit and I am working on the details of how to make it function smoothly.

Keep checking back here for more great new developments.