Rhynchostylis gigantea in bloom and this is how!
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- These are the Rhynchostylis orchids I have. It took me some years to find out how I grow them best in my climate and my conditions ( tried inside, outside, east facing, west facing, leca, bare rooted, potted in media), but I think this works best for them and me ;-)
Media: sphaghum moss and bark
Light: artificial light or east facing window sill
Fertilizer: 150ppm in reverseosmosis water plus slow release fertilizer
You have a nice collection of Rhynchostylis. I love the leaves on the gigantea Spots.
Thank you very much Anna. Yeah the leaves are more light green and grow in a orderly manner because this one was never placed to another location. Looking forward to my rhynchostylis retusa bloom. It was shortlived, but quite beautiful, but since the plant was really sick at that time, didn’t bother to even show the bloom. Looking back, I think the Rhynchostylis do like the moss bark mix quite a lot
Congratulations, beautiful blooms!I bought 4-different colors a couple years ago that haven’t bloomed yet. I bought them because they were supposed to have a good scent. 😮. Darn
Thank you very much! Well good or bad scent, to a certain extent, I guess it depends on one’s liking. It took a while for mine to start blooming too. Maybe they need more time. As for me, I definitely wasn’t giving them the proper care in the beginning 😆
I got a rhynchostylis gigantea red as a seedling. I heard it as slow growing. I have it in Bark and Charcoal under grow lights. I water it once a week.
Sounds like it should work. I found mine do very well with bark and sphagum in a kind of self watering set up. Still during summer, I can barely keep up with the watering. Enjoy!
congrats mate. I lost my gigantea in the end unfortunately. By the time I realize why it was too late sadly. Like you not wanting to try lecca again I will also not try my luck with the gigantea again. They get too big anyway.
I don't know if you are interested in my theory on why lecca did not work out for you as for lots of others that have tried lecca over the years. Many peopl end up complaining about lecca and ironically it has nothing to do with the lecca at all. At least that is my theory if you are interested in hearing it. I am sure you will dismiss it but I want to tell you anyway, then you can ignore it at your choice.
So theer is absoutely nothing wrong with lecca, it is practically as good as bark but so why does it not work for people. Well the answer is the roots. More specifically the root color. Now the reason I am fairly sure you say that they did not like lecca is because the roots struggled. They probably developed black tips and brown salt damage in places right? This led you to conclude the lecca was damaging the orchids which would not happen as much in an organic media like bark and especially moss. Now many just conclude lecca is no good and to never use it again. My theory will sound far fetched to you but I swear it isn't It's what I discovered trying lecca on orchids myself. I also experienced problems and it made no sense to me as I have 30 years experience using lecca and I'd never experienced the problems some orchids were giving me. I obviously wasn't just going to give up, I had to figure out a way to make it work. For that to happen I had to figure out what was going wrong. Why did some orchids love lecca and others did not. Many growers at this point conclude some species are more sensitive than others and can only be grown in moss or bark. But it has nothing to do with that. I haven't found a single sepcies yet that could not be adapted to lecca. Even my mexicoa ghiesbreghtiana grows in lecca. My cattleya walkeriana and schilleriana love lecca. Literally all my orchids are in lecca. Ok so get to the point. Why did the lecca fail? Ok so again just my theory and what I discovered. But it seems it has to do with the orchid, not the lecca! What I discovered was that orchids grown in moss very often have moss mites living on them. If moss mites have moss to feed on they will leave thick leaved orchids alone, they'd prefer a softer plant material to eat. But when we repot an orchid that has moss mites into an inorganic media like lecca the moss mites go crazy. They are so tiny you don't see them unless you really go looking for them and even then sometimes they are only noticeable in the middle of the night. So anyway, one repots the orchid, the moss mites haven't got anything to eat anymore. They have two options. Go hungry and die or eat the orchid instead. You might think moss mites can;t damage orchids. You;d be wrong. Take away their food source and they will feed off the orchid instead. They won't like it but they won;t just drop dead. Within half a year the orchid will become dehydrated. The roots will look terrible, some might even start rotting. You repot back into moss. The moss mites rejoice and leave the orchid alone again. The end...
I know it won;t convince you to try lecca again, no harm there even though lecca is alot cheaper than bark but it's worth being aware of why our plants do what they do. Many times the best we can do is form theories. Like you did, lecca is no good for orchids and like I did, the orchids that don;t like lecca have moss mites living on them. So that's my theory for what it's worth.
But like I said I did end up killing my gigantea. Yours do look in much better shape than mine did. Who knows maybe it was the lecca and the gigantea is the one species I found that doesn;t like it. Mine did end up dying and it was in lecca lol. But it did have moss mites too. I know because I saw them on the giantea too.
Hey Tom, thank you very very much for sharing your knowledge and your over 30 years of experience. For me, this platform is for exchanging knowledge and discussing different approaches in order to help each other , it’s not about convincing another person of what one thinks is right or wrong, so no need to worry whether I might be judging your theory or not, in fact, I find it quite interesting.
As for me, I was, and am way too lazy to really think about what was wrong about the leca, some people claim it’s the pH that prevents the orchids from getting enough fertilizer don’t know about that one. In fact, I still have quite some Orchids in leca, especially some cattleyas are in leca. I had one that I thought wasn’t doing too well in the Leca and repotted it and found that the roots were all alive. Indeed, I have one phal that is in Leca and that has great roots green roots. When I first started with leca years ago, I had great success and the roots were doing really great at least a year, but then I moved house and that changed quite a bit of the conditions. I think the light was different in the first place, but I never really questioned why.
I still think that given enough light and in absence of pests, you can try and play around with different media.
Trying out different media and way of growing follows to purposes for me: bringing them to bloom their best possible and growing with the least effort possible.
For example, right know, I have set of about 10 sick phals that I got from my partner late mother and planted them into lechuza basic pon ( not pre fertilized). Some have reestablished themselves and are flowering convincingly. Some are still struggling .
Well thanks again very very much for your comment Tom, you are always very welcome to share you knowledge !
Cheers Lee