Paph. Wössner Wolke seedlings

Here is one more update on my seedlings. This was the flask with most population. When deflasking they were so clumped together that I couldn't separate and count them, so I just planted them in groups.
Now, when re-potting, I separated each seedling and counted them - 57. It's like two flasks in one bottle.




Smaller runts will probably not survive, but I decided to keep all of them for now, surprisingly they had quite nice roots.

Paph. superbiens seedlings update

This superbiens gang from Ching Hua Orchids is so far the fastest growing seedlings I ever had. Not even 9 months out of the flask here they are:



I kept 13 seedlings out of this flask and  seems like they are doing good. Maybe will bloom in another year?

Paph. Carolyn Butcher seedlings update

I deflasked them in April 2014 so they are 20 months now. I have traded away about half of the flask and kept only a dozen of seedlings:



I think they look ok. The runts pot have some yellow leaves but they are the bottom ones, so I don't really worry about it.



I am trying to keep them in compots for as long as possible...

Paph. hangianum seedlings update

I deflasked them in March 2014. Here I found a picture of a tray with larger seedlings from May 2014:



Since then seedlings from tray were moved to pots. I know that it would be better to let them be in that tray for as long as possible, but about a month ago I discovered a scale on one of the seedlings in the tray. I freaked out and splitted them into pairs to control the infestation better. I was checking them every day and wiping the leaves with alcohol every three days for a month. Now it seems that scale might be gone, but plants probably got a major setback with transferring into pots and stressing the leaves with alcohol.
Here they are now:



Interesting, that I have four flasks of other paphiopedilum types seedlings in the same tank but none of those were affected. It's like stupid bugs knew to attack the most expensive ones!

Paph. callosum deflasking update

Callosum seedlings are out of flask for almost 5 months now:

Tray 1



Tray 2



I didn't loose any of them yet. Yellow leaves at the bottom came from flask, I was hoping they would fall off, but they still didn't.

Paphiopedilum malipoense deflasked

I got flask in a package today from Orchid Inn USA.
Paphiopedilum malipoense:



Seedlings looked pretty crowded there and I could see yellow bottom leaves on some of them.



So I decided to deflask right away. As always, the most difficult part was to untangle the roots from the puck of black jelly.



There were about 30 plantlets in the flask. They filled two trays full:

Paphiopedilum Paul Parks repotted

Paphiopedilum Paul Parks seedlings became a bit crowded in their tray:



I decided to graduate them to pots. As a result I got seven pots with three seedlings in each and two pots with four seedlings in each. I didn't expect such a good survival rate up to now:



I will probably leave myself 4 pots and make others available for trade or sale...

Phal. LDBQ seedlings update

Here is my Phalaenopsis LD's Bear Queen deflasking from last summer:



I didn't loose any yet, but one of the larger seedlings got wet rot on the tip of one leaf, so I had to cut it off. I had this type of rot on couple of other phals and from my experience - once it started, it will come back on the next leaf even if you cut it off, so there is a strong possibility that the plant will die.

Why does it have to be one of the larger ones?!

Phal. LD's Bear Queen seedlings update

LDBQ seedlings were deflasked in June, so they are just over 3 months old and they are growing really nicely. I think it is so far the most vigorous seedlings from all my deflaskings. It seems like very soon they will catch up with HDG that I deflasked in summer 2012.

Here is the picture:



I moved the larger ones from net pots to clay pots because roots started to come out from the net and weave around it. I already had this happening with HDG seedlings so badly that I had to cut the pot to free the roots. Now I decided to not wait that long.
Seedlings didn't mind moving and took off right away filling the wide clay pots with new roots.

What is different fromprevious phalaenopsis deflaskings? These guys went straight to orchid tank with t5 ho lights and constant temps and humidity (no trays with domes, no heating mats, no fuss) and, I guess, it is working.

Phal. LDBQ seedlings update

It has been just over a month since I deflasked Phal. LD Bear Queen seedlings from Kingfisher Orchids flask.
Here is how they look now:



There were no losses so far and all of them show some progress - new roots, or new roundish leaf, or both. I was a bit worried about them because the flask had dried medium and the roots weren't green when plants came out, but it seems they are fine now.



I learned my mistakes and sorted them by size from the beginning trying to pot equally sized together. I use all purpose 20-20-20 fertilizer in very small concentration at each watering. hopefully they will grow as fast as my HDG phals.

Phal. LD's Bear Queen seedlings

I received my shipment from Kingfishers and there was a flask with LDBQ. They could stay in the flask by the size but I noticed that medium was quite dry and crumbly, and roots of the plantlets were silvery grey, not green, so I decided to deflask right away.

Here is the result:



There are 25 seedlings in total. I kept them in the warm water for a while hoping that silvery grey roots will turn green, but some of them stayed grey still. Hopefully the new roots will start growing soon...

Deflasked seedlings update

Phalaenopsis Hawaii Dragon Girl grows much faster, but they were also larger sized when I took them out of flask. Unfortunately I lost two of my "pick-of-the-litter" from this batch to some kind of rot. The edges of the leaves got watery, see-through, I freaked out and threw them away.
Here is what's left:



There are still too many for my limited space, so I am planning to leave 15 largest ones for myself (back two rows), and get rid of the 5 compots at the front. Two of them (with larger seedlings) are already spoken for. The other three might have too small seedlings, so maybe I should just throw them away. I don't know if they are worth the space, even though I can see them growing.

Phal. Bedfrod Nonpareil seedlings are much slower.



I am thinking of throwing away two compots in clay pots that were just protocorms without any roots when I deflasked and being newb - potted them too. Now I know that too small ones might as well be eliminated at the beginning.

Deflasked seedlings update

This is all about Hawaii Dragon Girls. I noticed that some larger plantlets started to grow real adult round leaves. They did however look somewhat crowded in their compots. I didn't want them to come out all crooked and swirly, so I decided to separate those that were larger and bullying others.

Each of them got individual little pot - either plastic net pot or clay like this:



I was pleased by the look of the roots, even on the smaller seedlings:



They all were grouped into compots like this:



I didn't touch compots that contained smallest plantlets since there were no problems of crowdness. Here is a result of all the manipulations.
The family picture of all my Hawaii Dragon Girls:



There are about 25 seedlings still in compots and 13 seedlings in the individual pots.



Couple more years and I might see blooms, maybe.

Seedlings concerns

The seedlings with concerns are the ones of Phalaenopsis Hawaii Dragon Girl that I deflasked in the summer.
They have been growing well and didn't worry me much but recently I noticed a few of the leaves on random plants started to yellow:



They live in the orchid tank with no direct lamp above them shaded by other plants but still getting pretty bright light.



About a month ago they were in the humidity tray placed on the heating mat and I noticed at some point that some leaves looked like they had heat damage, they were pale, discolored and had wavy appearance (the word "boiled" came to my mind). I thought that probably heat mat produced too much heat and damaged some leaves. It was right before I got the tank, so I turned off the heat mat and transferred seedlings into tank.
Now, I cannot remember exactly, but it seems that the same leaves are now getting yellow.
Are there any other reasons for leaves to become randomly yellow? I am clueless and don't know if I should worry and do something about it.

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.

Seedlings on heat mats

So, my phalaenopsis seedlings spent three days on the heat mats and they are still alive and growing.



I was monitoring temps and humidity and noticed that during night temps are around 25-27 C, during day 27 C and in the evening when whole family gathers in the office in front of their computers (three working computers, three persons and a dog in the smallish room) - temps in the trays get up to 29-30 C.



Humidity is between 60 and 70% and creates a lot of condensation on the domes. It gets up to 70%, I open the domes to wipe them and it drops to 60%, then I close the domes and it climbs back to 70%.



I am not sure if 30C is too high temps for seedlings. Clay pots feel warm at the bottom but not hot. The sphagnum moss dries faster now, so I need to check on them more often.
Hope I am doing the right thing with all this heating...

Deflasked seedlings update

It has been over a month since I logged in the status of my seedlings.
They are still alive, there were no deaths since last update. Lots of them are working on a new leaf and all grew some new roots.

Phal. Bedford Nonpareil:





Phal. Hawaii Dragon Girl:





I also noticed this little plant - it looks like it has a keiki growing on the side:



Would be awesome if it survived.

Small update on deflasked seedlings

They are still alive and started to show the signs of new growth - either roots or leaves, or both. Some of the larger ones are potted into individual pots:



I am still worried if I should have left them mixed up with the small ones in their compots. Time will tell if I made a mistake by potting them up separately.



Compots look like they are growing too:



The overgrown in the flask Hawaii Dragon Girl seedlings have all curled and deformed leaves. Hopefully new ones will grow normal:



Even the pots with the smaller Bedford Nonpareil show some new leaves:



So far I threw away three smallish seedlings from the plastic pots. I noticed that they started to rot the roots. Apparently plastic pots and moss don't agree with me. Urgently I moved all the seedlings from plastic pots to clay ones. Luckily none of the other seedlings had this problem yet.

I keep them all in my humidity trays and water by misting the moss every 2 days using lukewarm tap water with dilluted 20-20-20 fert.

Moved some seedlings around

I did something that I probably shouldn't have done.
When I was deflasking my seedlings, I did it wrong. I should have put all the same sized seedlings together, instead I mixed them up. So, the large ones were in the same pot with smaller ones and it bothered me.
Finally I just got tired of looking at that mess and rearranged them. And like it wasn't bad enough - I also potted the largest ones into individual pots.
Here they are now, there are two hybrids mixed up in both trays (Bedford Nonpareil and Hawaii Dragon Girl) all labeled of course:





Hope it will not kill them. I already see some new roots pushing out of some plantlets.
Well, in couple weeks it will show if I killed them or not.

Bedford Nonpareil - one week after deflasking.

The seedlings survived first week and look fine to my unexperienced eye.



I have been keeping them in the propagation trays with domes and mist sprayed them to have the moss moist.
I never found any info on how long should they stay in those compots and decided to keep them there until the spring and then try to separate them into individual pots.
Now, couple of the seedlings are clearly outgrown their siblings:



I don't know if I should take them out to the own pots now or let them stay until the spring too.