Awww, geez, think I will be ill with you, so sorry . Gin

I'm so sorry to hear that Scott. I hope they make a quick recovery. Good luck with sorting out all the plants and tags.
Cheers
Rodrigo

Omg, what a horror. You have my sympathy for sure. Look on the bright side, the trauma will probably induce most of them to bloom early...and there were no Angs on the list. ;-) Good luck w/ the recovery.
-MB

I don't know what to say...what a nightmare! I've had a few blow off the deck, but not that amount. Just figuring out the tags.... pour yourself another,

Jane

Very sorry. I had a smaller event than yours a few years ago in a windsstorm, only two or three shelves went over, and it took me a whole day just to pick thru the mess, crunching into something nearly the whole time. And you don't dare let anyone else touch it.

Curling up is good, so is wishing hellfire on the critter, or even plotting revenge. I usually suck my thumb for good measure.

Hi Scott -

Well that's a kick in the pants. And such a nice list of plants! Just a word of caution... A year ago I was standing on a ladder that started to tilt, on the way down I grabbed a branch that had 4 orchids on it and everything went crashing. All of them developed infections from crushed leaves, etc. I managed to save two, but looking back on it, I should have immediately cut off the damaged tissues and agressively treated for fungal/bacterial paths. It might have saved my blooming sized C. aurea.

Just FYI. Man, I hate that feeling.

Awwww..... How horrible! Hope you are able to salvage them all. I am *sincerely* so sorry this happened to you! One of our Encyclia was almost drowned by the torrential rains then our dogs knocked over some of our orchids and took them for a romp through the yard. Nothing like you have experienced!

Please keep us posted how your planty things are doing.

C3D

I'm so sorry about the damage. That's horrible. The worst thing that happened to me was decades ago when I had my first little greenhouse in the backyard, someone had broken into it (it was locked) so the cut the fiberglass with some cutters and tore a huge hole in the back of the greenhouse. Whoever was in there was probably thinking there were marijuana plants growing in there. What ever the case, they or he, trashed the whole greenhouse throwing all the plants to the ground and basically knocking everything out of the pots. It was a mess. Plus I felt so violated that someone broke in and vandalized my orchids. My saving grace is that I wire all my tags and labels to the plant's pseudobulbs so I didn't have a problem with losing tags. I had to repot everything. Then buy another panel of fiberglass to patch up the side. So far, no one has broken into my greenhouses since. Some years ago, an earthquake rattled the area and some plants were knocked off the bench. Again, I had to repot them, but was lucky again to have the wire on tags.

Thank you all for your empathy!! :~)

Although some much needed new growths were damaged, I can't see any major damge with many of them.
Although, several were pretty thrashed.
They did land in the dirt and not on rocks or concrete.
The most damage was caused by the stand landing on them.

Good thing my liver has a high tolerance level! ;~)

I took the opportunity to do some dead root trimming and other needed maintenance.
I hope that several will do fine with just new roots, where new growths had been.
It figures that more damage was done to the better orchids and the common ones had little, or no, damage.

I still have pounds and pounds of pellets to gather.
Most of them, I know without tags.
A couple of them look very similar and I made a best guess.
Several others do have tags attached to the orchid, it's self.

I had actually forgot that I had some of these out.
They were really too valued for me to just leave and I can't believe that I was that dense.
Out of everything damaging that could've happened, this was likely the least of it.
So...I probably lucked out! ;~)

Scott

Oh no! The tag mess alone would drive me up a wall! Hope you're able to put the poor things back together again.

Sharon

Well ... crap! I like root trimming and repotting as much as anyone else but not on an emergency level! Glad your plants are pretty much OK.

About three years ago I had a shelf or two of orchids knocked over by our German Shepherd. The plants were kinda - sorta OK but there were tags everywhere. After that when I got a new plant I'd do a photograph (mug shot) if it and attach the tag to the pot. I also started putting making up a list of orchids and a code number. The code number would be written on a leaf (when possible) to further ensure I'd cut down on the NOIDS.

C with 3 Ds

Condolences.... I'm cringing as I read. I also started attaching name tags to the plant itself a few years ago so I wouldn't confuse myself when repotting.

Sorry to hear about that Scott. Just keep reminding yourself that orchids really are pretty tough plants & they should recover just fine.

Wish I could have put some of my chids on my balconey this summer. Gets quite hot out there though ... other day spilled some water on the balconey and was able to litterally watch it steam off.

moles? they've torn up my yard..got me a good mouser..savvy little calico named Min. she took care of the rodents in two weeks.

I'll really need to keep a close eye on these for a while.
Although I'm still horrified at what was there, I have others that are more valued or at least more fragile.
(Maybe!)
I'd still hate to think of what it would cost to replace all of these, regardless. :~0

My weather has been unusually cool, all summer.
In fact, regardless of the past few "hot" days, I can feel a major change coming.
These darned temp swings from high 90F down to mid-40'sF.
At least the nights a nice and cool for sleeping.
I'm already prepairing for another emergency late-night moving of orchids.
We had a major frost wipe out the tomatoes in early September, one year.
So...I'm already getting worried!

As far as cats, I've got the most worthless ones I've ever seen.
Plus, I can't stop everyone from keeping food for them 24/7!
It also attracts local cats and foxes.
I spent one summer killing racoons virtually every single night at the cat food.
I just cleaned out the carport to poor concrete it and the lazy cats have been living on literally hundreds of mice!:~(
As far as I'm concerned, no one is getting fed for some time!
Get to work you lazy felines!

Scott,

What a horror. I live in fear of a big wind blowing over the lathe house, w/ all the plants scattered to the squirrels.

Drink up. I'm having a glass of wine out of sympathy.

Hopefully, they'll all make a good come-back.

Whitecat8

Well some encouraging news for you.

I am a commercial grower and these types of accidents happen too often.

Surprisingly they do little damage to the plants. Actually the ones that loss new growth usually start another new growth almost immediately.

Six months from now you may not be able to notice that anything ever happened.