*sigh* I'm actually kind of embarrassed about this story...I can be such a doormat. I bought my first orchid last week. I went in to see my florist friend at his work (grocery store floral shop) and saw a beautiful yellow and pink Phal (the only one that wasn't pink or white) and fell in love with it. Their entire shipment had come in with chilling injury so they were marked down about 50%. I resisted at first, but then a few days later he called to tell me "my" orchid was still there, so I decided it was fate and drove up there. I never did actually examine the entire plant, just paid and left. My friend mentioned I would want to pick up some orchid food, but they were out so I stopped at a local orchid shop nearby to pick some up and get some advice. We got to talking and I decided to run out to the car to get it and when I brought it in, the owners looked at it and started fretting over what they thought was fungus (in addition to the cold damage). Well, to make a long story short, the gal convinced me to let them re-pot it and sent it back with her employee. She told me to go back with her if I wanted to watch and the owners left for lunch. At one point, the front door opened and she turned her head to look and broke the flower stalk off. I really didn't know what to say or do! It was a genuine accident and so I gave her the benefit of the doubt, figuring she would offer to do something for me, like not charge me for the pot. Nope, she just apologized and otherwise blew it off. I realize it probably wasn't her place to make that kind of call, but if it had been me in her shoes I would have at least referred the customer to the owner or just taken care of it and worried about covering my butt with the boss some other way. In retrospect, if I would have pulled my head out of my butt for two seconds I could have avoided the whole fiasco. I got all nervous and lost all my confidence, in part because I've convinced myself to be scared of growing orchids (and I'm a doormat). *sad*

We don't go away in the summer for more than four days at a time - we also shut off the water and don't ask anyone to take care of our garden. I water the pots well and cover the soil surface with chopped leaves I've saved from Autumn. I'm sure other choices of mulch would work too. I also bunch the smaller pots together so they aren't as exposed.

Bill, really nice dendrobium there. I feel truly the laziest person on this thread. I just bring them in! I don't have too many succulents, cacti , hoya or citrus so I guess it is a bit different. It is too early to think of the great move indoors around these parts luckily and I am bummed y'all have to start doing it already. I had a bad experience spraying soap on a nicely blooming dipladenia vine that I sprayed throughly and moved indoors. It promptly died on me. I guess I may have been a little too enthusiastic. I do have some outbreaks of aphids or an occasional thrips infestation(only on a dipladenia I have now had for almost 3 years, it took me a while to figure out it were thrips that were largely preventing blooms). Soap appears to do little for aphids. Eventually it bayer 3 in 1 or just live with it. I am lucky to not have too many mite issues, currently they just bleach the leaves on a nobile orchid. I bring in several jasmines, chrysanthemums, an avocado, some peppers and chillies, mint, pentas, snapdragons, verbena, penstemons, rozanne (perhaps I should leave the last two outdoors), kalanchoe, thanksgiving cactii, butterfly pea and my favorite purslane (they are excellent workhorses and overwinter nicely and even bloom most of the time. I have kept my orchids indoors except miltoniposis (which like it too cool for summer indoors) after some diastrous losses to bacterial and fungal infections this and previous summers.

Hi Mike. I didn't spray any of mine but I gave all of them the bucket of water treatment. I didn't use soap. I wanted to get rid of the ants. I soaked them for an hour or longer submerged in a large bucket of water outside until the ants scrambled to get out. Other than ridding the plants of ants, I didn't do anything else. Jane