We all need help! Help carrying our orchids (and begonias) in and out of the house every time the temp dips below 40 degrees.

What, no Phals, Oncids, and Paphs?

Hi
They certainly do seem to collect lol. I finally broke down and redid my shadehouse to provide some winter heat.
No more dragging them in and out of the house HOORAY!!
That's assuming my plan works .
Now to come up with a method to track ID"s Over the years they've been moved divided and now I find most are noids lol. What was fun when the state cut my orange trees and had to move 35 plants in three days. moved some to a caromboola tree but most were hastily potted up .
Now have them mostly straightned out but most have incorrect ID's especially the Catts and Dends.
Decide last year to make a heroic effort to tag them all.
but how to figure out Hybrids??
I recently got a Paph,my first for this genus and guess what the tag is incorrect lol I feel certain it's a species
but only thing I'm sure of is it's NOT what they said it was lol
Oh well almost all are responding to the new grow methods
and only lost two when I had to remove the roof to replace it. SUNBURN lol
It's funny but orchids are the only plants I can't bear to part with..No matter how many divisions or how common the species. i still want to keep them all. gary

I asked myself how I got so many when my collection hit about 200, so you have a ways to go before you think you are addicted LOL. Now that its closer to 400, I just gave up and quit asking myself such silly questions!!! And if you ever get tired of the in/out thing, do what I did and build a heated greenhouse or a heated shadehouse likr Gary's. Makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE in their care in winter!

Do you need help? Honey, just keep coming back to the Florida Gardening forum and you'll get all the help you need. hehe.

Gee thanks everyone, I feel so much better! Gary, I am like you, I can never part with an orchid. Even if it starts looking bad. Then it's usually trim it up and throw it under the pergola and tell it "sink or swim". I've saved many a plant with this tough love technique.

bihai, 400?? WOW that's amazing!! So I must still be in the todler stage!! lol

Here's a picture of a gazebo that I cut out of a magazine. I'd love to have that for my orchids but in the mean time they are under my grapefruit tree on cinder blocks and closet maid shelving.

Yeah I didn't realize I had that many orchids, OR about 400-500 bromeliads, until I really went out and actually did a detailed plant inventory a couple of years ago. During my stint as a nursery owner, I didn't "broker" plants (i,e, I didn't buy plants grown by someone else and resell them). I propogated my own plants from stuff I had had, generally for 10+ years. So the Inspector from the Ag Dept told me that they usually recommended people do a detailed inventory with estimated values of the replacement cost and keep it in a safe place in case a disaster killed everything and you needed to make an insurance claim. So I did, and boy was I ever surprised!
The named plants alone were easy, but I have literally tons of plants that either the tag is GONE, or unreadable, or I mounted the plant and it has no known identity...So I tallied up all the known named plants and recorded their names, then just made tallies by genera for all the unknowns. I came out with over 475 individual orchid plants.
I try to keep better records now, even though I don't sell plants anymore. In the "digital age" its easier because you can take a photo, put the name with it and stick it in storage and look the plant up again if the tag gets lost, LOL.

Barb, that is a pretty orchid spot, for sure!

Bihai-I have always admired you and your plant collections and photos. How about posting some of your georgous orchid collection for us orchid lovers?

*So I must still be in the toddler stage*
--that is right, cindeea :) You need more!

I accumulated around 400 of them in 6-7 years....Catts, vandas, epis, phals, cymbidiums, dendrobiums...oh, you name it. I exported plants from Ecuador, Brazil and Australia - some of them, I just had to have! And what is worse, I have no greenhouse! :(

Now, who needs help here? ;-)
Olya

I do know how you feel cindeea. The other day I walked on my front porch and realize wow!! too many potted bromeliads, have to get a roof built over my southern facing back patio to accomadate my growing collection. I mail order my broms and I had not realize I bought so many. Shopping for plants can be addictive LOL!

Hey everyone, let's see your pictures! It's pouring rain here (happy camper) and I want you to show your goods!

Bihai
That sounds likee a good i dea for keeping track of them
But what do you do if it's a hybrid??
Most of my old collection was give to me either outright or from people who moved away.. Another mistake i made was planting several species together. They became so intertwined I couldn't separate them and they had grown through the roof. Not so bad with the vandas and larger catts but the minis and epis were impossible to remove.
On the trees I used a map,marking limb A>B and so on
Which worked fair until Wilma thought they looked better in the neighbors yard.lol Now I have no trees so no problem lol.
One Catt I've had for over 20 years which I always believed was a Cattleya farmeri but recently found out there is no such animal lol Only Dendrobium farmeri.
Oh well ,I enjoy them anyway. and I'm planting in groups again lol gary

Some goods on the front porch LOL

{{gwi:458696}}

bradisha-very niiice! I love the pattern of your pavers.

Let me see what I can dig up.....

These are a few that agreed to have their photos taken today...
Dendrobium cucumerianum
{{gwi:895249}}
Dendrobium "Wedding Song" (mounted) with bromeliads and a mounted Phal
{{gwi:895251}}
Big Mokara (over 10 ft total length, 6 bloom spikes at present)
{{gwi:895253}}
Paph Lyco-Black Hawk
{{gwi:895255}}
Billbergias
{{gwi:895257}}
Neoregelia "Bird Rock"
{{gwi:895259}}
Aecmhea "Samaurai"
{{gwi:895261}}

ahhh Bihai-sutnning as always!

Bihai
Isn't it fun growing multiple species in the same location.?? I've actuall found they grow better this way.
I have to be much more careful than you as I don't have complete control of the climate and my whole area is only 12x20 lol.
When I went to Costa Rica I got to see my first "wild" growing orchids. Of course most were so far into the trees you needed binoculars to see them lol. But one Catt. was low enough that I could climb the tree. What struck me was how many different kinds of plants were growing in an area
around 3x3 feet including the incredibly healty looking Catt. I counted 30 before I decided I couldn't tell where one plant ended and another began.
Second thing that hit me was it is not growing anything like I would grow them at home lol WAY to much water the media was too wet not enough air and too dark lol.
Maybe mother nature made a mistake?? lol
Another thing was that in an area smaller than Palm Beach county there are over 500 species of orchids alone and with a LOT of effort I saw 4!!!
My hat is off to all those early explorers who actually found these things.
Can't imagine Paphs,DEnds or Prags growing wild but sure would like to see it,.
Have never heard of the D.cucumericam what is the flower like?? The den. family is so diversified it's hard to see how they're related.
gary

beautiful plants, Bihai!
Olya

Bihai - amazing, beautiful plants and wonderfully arranged too. Picture perfect! I would love to see your garden!

Bihai - beautiful!!! I could become addicted easily.

cindee - your orchids are great! I only have one and I know not a thing about them. I bought it last year at HD because it had a pretty flower. Flower lasted most of last summer and then faded. It is still thriving but has not flowered again yet but it does have more leaves and looks very healthy. I don't do anything to it other than put it in the rain now and then (when it rains!). It hangs out on the screened porch by the pool and I only brought it in a couple of times last winter when it got really cold.

My plants thank you for your compliments! They try hard to look presentable, LOL.
Gary, I like to mix all sorts of stuff together, on the mounts. I have a new one where I put some creeping peperomia with some snippets of Pleurothallis dodsonii and Dendrobium lodgessii and some othe rstuff. neat!

Gary,
A couple of things I noticed in cloud forest in CR was short time the clouds lifted. First day sitting on balcony sipping coffee I was looking at some clouds and thinking rain when they lifted and there was a MOUNTAIN! (I'm way to used to FL.) By the time we got up there, by tractor-wagon, it was only a short time before the clouds lowered and we had to start back as visibility was closing fast. We were back at our lodge for lunch.
Also agree with you about not being able to see them as they are way too high, hanging over cliffs, etc. Much respect for the botanists who found them.
And, lastly, I don't understand the 'likes to be potbound'. I don't guess anybody told the ones that have a whole forest to grow in. :-)
ron

ron
When you actually see them in habitat it's easy to see why they were ignored for almost a century. Catts were used for packing material lol.
Wonder how long it would take to see all 1700 species.??
They are soooo easy to overlook. gary