New Phalaenopsis Pictures

I already posted about my online project where I collect pictures of Phalaenopsis hybrids. Lately I wasn't able to spend much time on it and still didn't finish the feature allowing users to upload images. But even though it is not finished - people do visit my website regularly, I can see it in stats.
Also recently I was contacted by originator of two hybrids who offered me images of the crosses.
Here they are, link will bring you to the page with image and parentage of the cross:

Phalaenopsis Brandon Yu




Phalaenopsis Colleen Yu:




Aren't they just wonderful? This motivated me to start working on the project again. If you have any nice pictures of registered Phalaenopsis hybrids, please consider including them into my database. Send the images to orchideya2012 @ gmail.com (remove the spaces)

We got a guest

Here is who has been visiting my small vegetable garden:



We noticed a hole dug under the fence but had no idea who did it until this morning.
Busy rabbit knows what he wants and goes directly to freshly sprouted new lettuce greens:



How cute is that! Good thing I don't grow cabbage...

My plants on ebay.

Well I am making an effort to reduce my collection again and put up some of the plants on ebay here:

http://www.ebay.ca/sch/orchideya12/m.html?item=111133556426&ViewItem=&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

Check it out, maybe you see something you like. I can only ship within Canada.

Getting me some more plants...

The long waited catalogue from Kingfishers arrived yesterday and the selection was so great that I couldn't keep the promise to not order anymore plants this season. It was really hard to choose and stay in the limits of reasonal plant spendings.
Here is what I am getting:
Phal. bellina ‘Chen’ because... well, it is bellina - that's why;
Phal. Corning Ambo because I really like the wildish shape of corningiana blooms and hope to see it in this cross, plus the fragrance of course;
Phal. gigantea X P. LD’s Bear King since I already have gigantea x LD's Bear Queen - getting a King was only logical;
Phal. Gelblieber X P. cochlearis - I couldn't find any pics of this cross but think it should be interesting and hope that it will take wonderfully patterned lip of cochlearis.
I am also getting a flask of Phal. LD’s Bear Queen - cross of DTE and bellina.
Now, to patiently wait for them to arrive...

Phalaenopsis parentage info

I am trying to figure out the exact information on both seed and pollen parents of the following phalaenopsis hybrids:
Dawn Flower
La Catillon
Laura Galto
Twin Vision
Ann Thorne
Anthura Manchester
Bo-Liu Rod Art
Shou Shan
Tinny Moonlight
Tonjy Gold
Camanek
El Prado
Fire Music
Golden Valley
Hybrid Ignota
Ivory Pearl
Lady Valentine
Lavender
Lee Huei Rose
Luchia Smile
Malang Jaya
P. A. Benson
Redland Spots
If anybody has any info on them, please let me know in the comments.
Yes, I tried the orchid register website, no success.

My phalaenopsis reference project

I have added a new feature to my "project" - the chart with ancestry which shows the species breakdown. It was exciting to work on it because I got to use Microsoft .NET chart control which I like but don't get to use very often.
Now this chart sort of makes the plants pages without pictures to look more alive.
I spent quite a time to create a custom palette for the chart because all default ones were too colorful and I wanted it to blend in with overall design of the site.
At the beginning I had all the species to come up but when there were too many with small value - the labels became too squishy and overlapping, so I had to add "Other" slice to collect all of the species with smallish values.
Now I am thinking that I should probably add some table that will have full list of the species and their values, even the smallest ones.
So, still work-in-progress, but already kind of useable:
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/B/Brother-Passion-id%3d3c4080b8-1fc8-47e0-9bd8-e9e840370f6b
or
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/B/Brother-Sara-Gold-id%3dbc56913e-9153-4b4e-bf4a-ce7671be8c29
or
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/S/Sogo-Gold-id%3df019b899-dc39-4346-af26-005eac33645d
or
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/T/Tristar-Snow-Princess-id%3db5866a70-cc03-4229-ba62-fee646df2463
Or any other hybrid for that matter.
Looks ok? Any suggestions?

Something I've been working on...

For some time I have been working on a small reference app that I thought might be fun to use for some people who is into orchids, hybrids and their parentage. It is far from being finished yet, focuses only on phals at the moment and wasn't properly tested too (it is my hobby project and I have very limited spare time, so maybe you'll help me to test it), but I think I can now share the first draft of "beta version" (are these correct terms ?).
Unfortunately I don't have a lot of pictures of all the crosses created so most of the pages have ugly placeholder "sorry no picture yet" but ultimately in ideal world each plant page should look like this:
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/P/Penang-Girl-id%3df317628d-fcf4-4362-8bf9-977ebb1b441f
or this:
http://phalaenopsis.orchideya.ca/Plants/S/Siam-Treasure-id%3d4e093a28-a1c2-495c-9b4c-7fc20d05f3fd
And the left bottom part of the page (now empty) will have online availability of each cross (that only if I find vendors who doesn't mind to have their inventory listed).
I am still working on that part.
Well, let me know what you think and if you find any issues please let me know too, so I could fix them. You can email to orchideya2012 at gmail.com
Also if anybody would like to contribute images of the phal crosses to be published there - please send them via same email above along with copyright info.

Seedlings available to sell

I did an assessment of my deflasked seedlings and realized that all of them survived and are progressing well, which I didn't expect really for it being my first deflasking.
Anyways, I decided to sell some of them on ebay, hoping to raise some money for new flask purchase and free some space for new seedlings.
As a test I created a listing for one compot here:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Phalaenopsis-Hawaii-Dragon-Girl-compot-/111079020481
Here is how the seedlings.
Group shot with a dollar to give an idea of their size:



Compot 1 (currently listed on ebay)



Compot 2



Compot 3



Compot 4



Now, obviously since I never sold anything on ebay before, my feedback is 0 and judging from my own buying habits - it is not likely anyone would actually bid on it. I wonder how first timers go about building their feedback.
Any suggestions from experienced ebay sellers? Does the listing look ok? Is the start price reasonable?

I am also willing to trade for any paph or phal seedling compots except standard phals with large side petals. I prefer star-shaped ones and fragrant. I posted the trade thread on the OB in the Orchid lounge section.

New purchases from the show

Two paphs from Piping Rock. Smaller one is the sanderianum seedling, larger one - the blooming sized Prince Edward of York, which is a primary hybrid rothschildianum x sanderianum:



Responsible for this two purchases is my St.Swithin that produced the bud on my window and made me think that I can grow multifloral paphs. I hope the two new ones will follow him...

Four phals. On the back - stuartiana and Mituo Sun King (my second one and totally different from the first one), both are in bloom from Crystal Star.
On the front - Ho's Lovely Amethyst with buds and Princess Kaiulani with spoiled flower, both from Ten Shin Gardens.



Closer view of stuartiana bloom:



Closer view of Mituo Sun King:

Seedlings

I was bored last weekend and decided to move my phalaenopsis seedlings around, again.
There were actually several reasons to do it. With pots being on the heat mat I noticed that they dry out too fast, so I wanted to increase the layer of sphagnum moss in the pots, get rid of net pots and was really curious about their roots conditions.

The roots were fine and growing on the most of the seedlings. I didn't loose any of them yet. Since they were out of pots - I did sort them by size, again, created several compots to use valuable space on the heat mats more efficiently but still left some of the larger ones single. Here is what came out of it.

Phalaenopsis Bedford Nonpareil:



It is amazing how much difference in size is between the largest and the smallest seedlings from this flask.
Since heat mats make the tray bottom pretty warm I decided to raise pots above and placed each of them on the plastic net pot or vanda basket. Then I could leave a small layer of water right there in the trays, so humidity jumped to 85% with temps around 28 C - almost Borneo conditions.

Phalaenopsis Hawaii Dragon Girl:



Dragon girls are more consistent in size.
The only problem I have now - a lot of condensation on the clear plastic domes that cover those trays. I have to wipe them a lot.

Since rearranging seedlings free-ed(is that a word?) some space in the heated trays - I will put some of my other seedlings in there. Phal. gigantea will be first to get in.

Tacca seeds

Taccas are impressive tropical plants that have weirdly shaped large blooms with wiskers.
There are couple different species of Tacca. I used to have Tacca chantrieri - Black Bat plant, but it didn't grow well because of the low humidity.
After that I successfully germinated seeds of Tacca integrifolia - White Bat plant, but seedlings didn't survive, again because of low humidity.
Now with humidifier in the house and orchidarium to come(maybe someday, it is still delayed) - I decided to try Tacca seeds again. This time I bought seeds of Tacca nivea which I think is just a variety of integrifolia, so it is supposed to be white too.



Last time it took three weeks for seeds to sprout and they were in the plastic container seating on the top of computer case - it gets pretty warm there.
Now it should be better since I have heat mats.

I used the sphagnum moss as a medium, creating a layer in each of the two plastic containers:



5 seeds got into each container:



I covered them with long strings of moss, so it will be easy to check them out without disturbing:



Both containers are now inside the humidity tray on the heat mat together with my phalaenopsis seedlings.
Wonder if they will sprout.

Seedling heat mats

Here is what I received in the mail yesterday:



Two of them - because I have two trays with phalaenopsis seedlings that I deflasked recently. They are pretty cheap and come in different sizes, some of them fit under two or four trays. I bought two of the one tray size because I don't have large enough spot to fit two or more trays together.

I could feel warmth coming out of them right away and the trays bottoms felt quite warm to touch. I put the thermometer to see how high the temps will go inside with closed domes - it rapidly jumped over 30 C.
I freaked out that seedlings will cook in there, opened trays and put folded towel between the mats and the trays. Temps went down to 29 C, I closed the domes and was watching it for a while. Temps stayed at 29, so I guess plants shouldn't cook.

I decided to buy heat mats after reading web on care after deflasking. Many sources claim that bottom heat is very beneficial for small seddlings.

We'll see if my babies will grow any faster.

Off topic: FPS Emma

Our gamer plays online.

Bought a humidifier

Our house is heated by the hot air outlets in the floor. Needless to say that it kills all the humidity here. We bought our house new from the builder and first year it had around 60% RH probably because there was still some moisture in the basement etc.
This year however after just a month of heating it started to drop even below 40%.

Desperate, I bought small 3 Gal. Sunbeam warm mist vaporiser to keep air moist around the orchids. But with an open concept house that didn't help much. I needed something more powerful.

After some research about humidifiers and convincing the family that we really need to create more moisture environment in the house, last weekend I bought the 9 Gal console humidifier from Honeywell. It claims to work with the house up to 2300 sq.ft. which should be enough for me.



It quickly raised humidity from 38% to 50% on the first floor and I decided to keep it there, because setting it higher might grow mold in the house. Since my phals will go into orchidarium, I hope 50% should be enough for vandas, catts and paphs.

The unit is bulky, looks pretty ugly, turns on and off automatically to keep my 50% RH and is quite noisy (especially during the night) despite the words Quiet Care written on it.
Well, maybe the other ones are even louder, we will get used to it.

One of my "growing areas"

Here is where my high light orchids live:



The window spans from the seiling on the main floor down to the basement by the staircase. Sun appears from the left at sunrise and moves through the area whole morning until about 1 pm. So the left part of the area gets strong noon light and the right part - just a morning sun.

Here is the windowsill, that's where I used to burn my catts and vandas until figured out to adjust them to the strong sun gradually. It is a bit crowded, but I plan to put some small plants on the top shelf in the orchidarium where the light might be too strong for phals.



Vandas along the railing, there is plenty of space to get some more (evil smile):




Some of my phalaenopsis plants are enjoying the morning sun:



And here is Emma napping right on everybody's way, so we have to carefully step over her. She likes the sun too and luckily ignores my plants:

New spike discovered

I have several noId phals from the times when I had no idea about all the orchid species beyond the ones sold at the grocery stores.
They are still potted into their old clear plastic pots with old cheap Shultz bark mix, I don't fuss with them much, water every couple weeks when don't forget and surprisingly they are growing and regularly blooming.
One of them started a new spike:



Even though it is not as exciting as have some fancy novelty hybrid spiking, but still I will have some blooms and it is always nice.

Here is the plant itself:



I think probably keeping it in the basement could have helped with triggering the spike.

Exciting news

Yesterday we have ordered an orchidarium for me!
It is Grand Cayman model with six lamps from US company Orchidarium.
The sad part is - I have to wait for two months before it gets here, but I think it is worth waiting.
I am sure my orchids will be thrilled with their new home.
I have been searching for the images of the Grand Cayman setups, just to see how people are using them and found some pictures here:
Orchidarium pictures
and here:
Grand Cayman Orchidarium
Mine will host mostly phals, but I might put some catts and vandas at the very top to use the high light areas. I am planning to utilize the hanging space a lot by mounting some of my phals on to treefern slabs.
Hope it will look good too.

Buds update and why they don't blast

I am very happy with my budding phals. Their progress is so obvious and buds still didn't drop (it usually happens to the most of my phals).
This is the Phal Vio Vio, it is now clear that there should definitely be two blooms:



Spike on the cross of Buena Jewel and equestris alba grew more and it now looks like I will have not one but three!!! flowers (if everything goes well, of course):



All of this is very unusual for me because normally the buds on my phals would grow to some degree and then wilt and drop (happened on fasciata 'Shaffers' and speciosa C1). Well, the reason of all the buds misfortunes was a low humidity. I mean it seems to be fine for noIds but fancy named ones like it more humid.
Recently I bought a flask of phal babies and was looking to buy the humidity trays for deflasking times. When I bought some - I realized that they are large enough to fit mature plants too. Needless to say, I went and bought some more and now my phals seem happy. The trays have see-through domes with ventilation holes that can be opened and closed. With opened holes they keep steady 80% humidity.

Here is how they look:



And with dome on:



Now our house is overfloated with those little orchid houses and I need to water them not as often as before.

Pictures from the park

These were taken yesterday evening. There was no sun.
Pretty pink/purple wild flowers:



Lighthouse on the Ottawa river:



Geese in flight:

Pictures from park

It was a nice evening yesterday, finally it is getting warm as if it is really a spring. We went to park after dinner and here is what we saw
Squirrels changed their coats and look bright and new:



Big white birds are everywhere:



Geese had their babies and you really have to watch where you step. Sort of hard to photograph because they are constantly moving.



Closup cuties:



Lots of ducks in the water, but none with babies yet: