New member from LA

Ok, thanks, that makes sense. Can you show me a picture of one of the fertilizer cups for the mounts, by any chance?

 

Ah ok. Thanks! I'll take a look.

 

Back again from a bit of a break -- does anyone have any experience with heating a small greenhouse? I'm in Los Angeles, so freezing isn't really an issue, but it does get into the lower 40s/upper 30's every winter here, and my little greenhouse is essentially unheated.

Last winter I tried using a small electric space heater--but it wasn't powerful enough to make much of a difference, and it ended up burning the leaves of the nearest plant. So that was a fail.

 

Ah great, thanks for the answer! I'll take a look at that calculator, that's helpful. Trying to turn that propane heater on and off manually must have been a pain indeed...

If I can't figure out the heater situation I did think about leaving the GH unheated and concentrating more on plants that can handle low temps (above freezing of course) without a problem, but of all the supposedly 'temperature tolerant' plants I've tried only Cymbidiums, Epi. magnoliae and Cattleya/Laelia purpurata seem to be truly unfazed by the winters here. I'm sure there are others but haven't found them yet...

 

I'm in Eagle Rock, which is sort of between Pasadena and Glendale. So no, not by the coast at all--it gets far too hot here in the summers to grow things like Masdevallias here (I wish I could...)

 

Actually, I'll ask my other question here (why not).

Earlier I was having problems with my plants' leaves being too yellow, getting too much light/not enough food. Based on advice I received on this forum I started using an RO filter (which works, but is a pain because it generates so much waste water and so little filtered) and the MSU fertilizer. Now new leaves are a better color, so, good.

But I'm still having a problem that new leaves/growths on my plants are regularly smaller than the older ones. They do flower, but the plants seem to be getting weaker rather than stronger over time. From what I've read the usual culprits for this condition are too little light (not the case here, if anything light levels are on the high side) and insufficient food -- but I'm using the MSU fertilizer according to the instructions on the jar.

What other factors should I look at? Roots on these plants appear healthy. Could stress from too-cold winters cause the weak growths? Again, these are supposedly temperature-tolerant varieties, but...I'm not sure.

 

Well, I only have a couple of orchids currently (holding off on buying any more until I can get these in better shape). The ones that seem to be most affected by successively weaker growths are Cattleya Arctic Star (a C. intermedia/harrisonae hybrid with some other stuff mixed in), a couple of Brassavola nodosa hybrids, and Encyclia/Prosthechea fragrans. Cymbidiums, Epi. magnoliae, and Catt/Laelia purpurata seem to be less affected. I also have a couple of epiphytic cacti and they seem to grow normally.

I'd gladly give up the RO filter--I'll take a look again at the MSU fertilizer webpage about adjusting pH.

One thing about the filter, though -- my misting system runs via a pump off of a 55 gallon barrel that I fill up with tap water. This works well, but eventually the misting heads get clogged up with what appear to be mineral deposits from the tap water. It would be great to be able to filter out those deposits, but there is NO WAY that I'd be able to fill up that barrel with my current RO filter, it puts out so little filtered water per hour--I haven't timed it, but it seems like it takes over an hour to fill up a 5 gallon bucket. So...some other water filtration solution would be nice, if only so that I don't have to keep swapping out misting heads so often, but that's low on the priority list.

 

Ok, thanks for the tip on the misting head cleaner, that will definitely help.

All of the plants I mentioned, actually, are mounted. That's why I put in the misting system in the first place, so I could grow mounted plants. I will say that I mounted all of them within the past year, so even though they all have grown new roots since then, it's possible that they haven't had enough time to adapt. I wondered if possibly the mounted plants aren't getting enough food -- I spray them with diluted fertilizer regularly, but I'm not sure how much they absorb. The color of the leaves is greener than before, though, so they must be getting something out of it.

Apart from that, it does seem like I should try to get the heating situation under control.

Thanks for the tip on the Cymbidiums -- I have just a couple but will try the time-release fertilizer, yeah.