Orchid Culture - Questions & Answers from This Month
by Sue Bottom, from the St. Augustine Orchid Society Newsletter. Email us with any orchid question. If we can't answer it, we'll find someone who can! Send photographs too!
Packing Peanuts
Q. Are these the wrong kind of packing peanuts?A. Yes, those look like the biodegradable kind. If you drop one in a glass of water, it'll pretty much dissolve. You can drop that off at a UPS store, they'll reuse them gladly. If you use them at the bottom of the pot, they will collapse and not provide the air reservoir you want when repotting your orchid. (Jan-25)
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Flower Blasting and Burned Edges
Q. This cattleya produced a couple wonky blooms and I was thinking of tossing it. Then it produced some nice blooms. Now I’ve got this! What do you think?A. It could be bacterial blighting from moisture condensing on the flowers, but I think it's more likely to be a thrips problem. In the first pic, it looks like thrips attacked the blossom before it opened. In the pic of the open white flower, you can see one of those devils crawling on the lip, and there's never just one. The browning burned edges of the petals and sepals are another sign of thrips.
I'd say you are going to have to go to war. Some people use a pump up sprayer to spray all the buds and flowers with something like Orthene twice a week, every week. In my growing area, a bimonthly drench with Orthene so the Orthene is absorbed up through the roots kills the thrips from the inside out. I've been doing that for several years and it has overcome a very nasty thrips problem I was having. (Jan-25)
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Habenaria Sprouts Early
Q. First time Habaneria grower here. When the leaves turned brown, I gently tugged and they fell off. I then saw this tuber in the soil. I was surprised to see it already had green growth. What do I do now? Do I place it in plastic bag and winterize it until Spring or do I pot it?A. Pot it up, it looks like it doesn't want to wait til spring! (Jan-25)