Orchid Cabinet Update - November 2024
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- I show a bunch of new orchids growing in my Rudsta cabinet purchased from Ikea a few years ago. These include new Bulbos, Angraecoids, rupiculous Cattleyas, and others. I also show how I water the plants while still inside the cabinet.
I enjoyed watching the video. Thanks for sharing.👏🤗
@@shirleyholt898 My pleasure! 🙌😃
A most enjoyable video! Thanks so much 🪴
@@bettedaviseyes8563 🙌😃
I feel the struggle with phals. Mine are in normal room temp and humidity and the summer blooming phals seem to like it. The light is normal cheap leds used for generic plant seedlings.
I keep them outside in the balcony during summer and those are situated under the table, which is full of my catts. So they get only the ambient light, which is bouncing off from the white walls. So I guess the light level here would be your north side deep shade. Hope you’ll find the sweet spot!
Those sound like pretty good conditions! I've started turning that cabinet into a rupiculous Cattleya cabinet instead. Those species LOVE the conditions in there.
It was very interesting to see your update. You have a wonderful collection of orchids. I am looking forward to your future updates and news about your project of growing rupicolous cattleyas from seed. I followed your Rudsta design, only for my phals I have much weaker Barrina lights. My cattleyas seem to be doing fine. Some of them bloomed or are going to bloom. I am only concerned about my c. walkeriana which had emerging buds, but they aborted very quickly. It was a big disappointment.
@@annatydniouk5739 Was it a small walkeriana? They will often abort until they get larger. Night lighting in the grow area at night can cause them to abort as well.
@@SVKLOrchidsYes, it is smallish. There is also some night lighting, because the cabinet is i the living room, but I use a special light blocking fabric and cover the cabinet when the lights are turned off at night.
@@annatydniouk5739 Sounds like one or both of those factors could have influenced the plant to abort the buds, sadly
@@SVKLOrchids I hope that it will bloom when it gets bigger and light-blocking fabric will help.
I really enjoy an experiment so I want to see what happens with the Brazilian rocks.
My Lc Dinard has set another sheath, and there is something going on in another leaf. It looks like it could be bud related but I'm not sure.
Orchids seem to continually be teaching us, or at least trying to teach us.
@@mipogrow I’m excited to get started on the experiment too!
I grow all of my plants (orchids, aroids, carnivorous plants, terrarium plants) under lights and my thought on your previous cabinet video is that the lights were too intense for phals, just based on the color your Nepenthes has. It’s difficult to compare different LEDs so wattage is the easiest (imperfect) way to compare. For novelty phals, I usually will max at 10w per light, placed at about 8 inch intervals to cover the shelf in equal light, and that’s on the high side for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get away with completely removing the lower light and the residual light that makes it through the top shelf would be enough for low-moderate light plants! But also a couple of cheap 10w shop lights would make them very happy. Not that I would ever try to dissuade someone from growing more Rupiculous Laelias but I have a soft spot for Phals, too 😅
@@thequeenofsporks That sounds right! I guess lights are bright enough at this point to be able to overload plant metabolism. Really interesting stuff, so I have to adapt the collection.
I'll be fascinated to see what happens with the sandbox & rocks.
@@sschul5886 You and me both!
I run a similar set up but I'm already thinking about designing v2. I would look into putting a few ac infinity cabinet/computer fans in there. If gas exchange is limited the plants will run out of CO2 immediately at the leaf surface and not be able to take advantage of the lights. Cattleya are much more metabolically flexible than many other orchid types. One thing to note with the LEDs is that you can easily saturate the photosystems in the chlorophyll in unnatural ways. This can sort of "constipate" the plant in terms of converting light energy to sugars as well as nitrogen reduction in the plant. 5g/gallon magnesium sulfate and 1-2mL/ gallon molasses can help move plants along if you see them stalling under the lights. You will notice that Ray is already selling a modified K-Lite with some more ammonium because we are now beginning to appreciate that just because plants love to uptake nitrate forms of nitrogen that doesn't mean that nitrate is the "best". Ammonium stimulates the microbial nitrogen cycle and is less energetically intense to convert to amino acids as long as its not overapplied. Nitrate nitrogen requires a lot of energy (and water) to reduce inside the leaf so that it can be turned into an amino acid. The backlog of nitrates and ammonium in the leaves causes an energy drag in the plant and your plants will become much more disease prone and tasty to insects. I've been experimenting with this for the last few years and have started to replace my nitrogen allowance with small doses of amino acids. Once I'm out of my normal K-Lite I will be buying the new formula. Nitrate fertilizers outside of the plant also oxidize organic matter in combination with microbes which can rob your plants of non gaseous carbon sources which are also important for maximizing photosynthesis. Sorry for the wall of text and I wish you well with your cabinets
@@Spencer_Plant_Projects Very interesting! Do you have any links I can check out? I did realize Ray has a new formula available. I’ll check it out too.
Hey hon you sure you killed the spider Mites? Several of us are still fighting them! They are not going away with typical sprays! These are tough mites! I'm spraying with straight 91% alcohol and all it's doing is keeping them at bay! 😱 these are like super mites! But yea I get you should grow what works great in your conditions. I do! 😊
@@hillbillyorchids So far I’ve only had them come back once! I’ve got a spray recommended to me from Dustin (here but not) and it works really well!
@SVKLOrchids oh gosh can you tell me what it was? We have used many different things and can't kill them off! 😂
@@hillbillyorchids It’s spider mite knock out by doktor doom. I bought it on amazon.
@@SVKLOrchidsAWESOME thanks!
@@hillbillyorchids No problem!
My phals, all 25, and those of my office mates' that I help reflower, LOVE a north window and no more than that. I'm further north than you, and it keeps them cool enough at night in winter to prompt reflowering.
The babies and phal samera live 10 feet from a south window. So far everyone is happy.
It's very dry where i am, no more than 30% usually.
@@sschul5886 That’s sounds nice! It would be great to have a window where I could grow my orchids. Maybe I’ll have to grow some in the office…
Try raising the phals up. That one in the terracotta pot looked low.
@@carynholden6421 Ya, I hadn’t thought of raising them up to be above the lights!
I wonder if you strung a piece of shade cloth between the lights and the Phalaenopsis to get the light lower. Some species seem to be very susceptible to temperature and humidity..I have killed every Phal. lobbii that I have bought.. just can’t get the conditions right.
@@garyknight3019 That would probably work, I think it wouldn’t look great. Oh well, I’ll just have to adapt my collection.
@ true…I use Vivosun lights in my grow tent..you can control the brightness and other parameters for seedlings, growth, flowering etc. the ones I use have a built in fan for circulation. They do generate a bit of heat though. They do generate a bit of heat though. I struggle to maintain a good growing temperature range once summer comes. I’m using it on the patio and not indoors though. It was great for getting my seedlings in a growth cycle through winter. That way I can deflask during the cooler months rather than waiting for spring.
@@garyknight3019 Nice! I just set up a vivosun tent today!
@@SVKLOrchids Hope you are going to do a video on it. Will be very interested in how you set it up and what you think about them.
@@garyknight3019 Yes! All the plants are coming inside this week. I have one tent full and a waiting for the plant rack to get here before filling the new tent. Making videos as I go!