Deflasking Orchid Seedlings

It has been a long time since I've seen any narrow necked flasks, many people have switched to polypropylene with wide tops or mason jars. If it is narrow necked glass, the newspaper/hammer works well. If it is wide mouthed the agar/seedling mass can be jiggled and will come out in one piece. I squish the agar a bit and tease the seedlings apart if the are good sized. If they are very small, I separate clumps and pot them up that way. I water with 160 ppm of fertilizer at every watering as soon as the seedlings are potted out. If there is mite contamination in the flask, a miticide would be appropriate, but otherwise, there is no reason to use a pesticide.

When I was having a lot of trouble with mold and damping off, I used Subdue and another fungicide. It didn't seem to help a lot, I had 70 to 100% loss. When I switched who did my flasks, I no longer had the same problems and don't use anything to treat them now. I now have 0 to 15% loss on uncontaminated flasks and a bit worse on contaminated flasks.

Unfortunately, my flasker is retiring and I am going to be doing my own from now on.

 

I've not encountered it, but I know labs that have had contamination from mites. I'll ask.

 

No, the first time I heard about mites in flasks was about 20 years ago. They aren't the same mites that one sees in the greenhouse, they are attracted to the agar.

 

Things thrive in the flasks, lots of sugar and humidity. The object is to keep only orchids in there as other things would and do overtake the orchids. There are lots of things that can contaminate a flask. As I understand it, most contamination occurs in a relatively short time after flasking and was present at the time of flasking. Later contamination can be from a leak in the seal, an imperfect fit in the lid, a bad filter, extreme changes of pressure that forces air through a filter, and on and on.

The mites that affect flasks are present outside, particularly in grass, and are attracted to the agar. In a lab, if there is contamination of a flask that has been growing well for months, it could be mites. The mites travel from flask to flask, so if contamination is spreading to nearby flasks, mites would be suspected. The mold was described to me by Luarent (Pacome on OI) as 'Always the same kind of greenish-grey mold."

As I think about it, the mites might not be harming the plants, but it is the mold that is the problem. If that is the case, a miticide wouldn't be necessary at deflasking.

All of this is theory and hearsay on my part as I haven't started flasking yet.

 

Thanks for the link, Candace. Have you received material back from the yet?

 

Candace, I am waiting now for my carpenter to build the case for my HEPA filter/fan unit. I hope to be flasking in a couple of weeks. But it is good to know about a good flasker, they sound very amenable to serving their customers.

Sorry, Marc, about drifting off from the deflasking topic.