Thursday, January 31, 2013

Phal. Brother Gelblienosa II

With all my phals moved into terrarium, I am seeing lots of root growth.
All the stalled or blackened roots are now activating growing points. Stems get little bumps all over the plants.

Now, this is pretty weird place to grow a root(notice one on the small left spike):



It is Phal. Brother Gelblienosa II who is confused so much that it started the root on its spike. This spike is not new, it had a flower last summer. I never saw the roots appearing on the spikes before...

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Phalaenopsis gigantea

Here is someone who definitely likes being in the orchid tank.

After doing nothing except rotting some old roots, Phalaenopsis gigantea seedling now in the tank is growing two new roots (second one is on the other side):



And I just noticed the start of the new leaf:



Hopefully this growth continues...

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Second "level" on the windowsill

Since most of my phals went into orchid tank, I decided to retire the plantstand with phals and vandas and moved the rest of the plants to a south-east window. Of course my windowsill became crowded and I decided to create a second level there using wire shelves from the shoe rack. Here is what came out of it:




The window gets a lot of direct sun during noon hours and plants were burning there a lot, so I put some "frosted glass" window film to protect them.



These measures are temporary because I got an approval on getting one more tank for "all the rest plants", so the window will be unloaded some...

Phal. Kuntrarti Rarashati

Phalaenopsis Kuntrarti Rarashati was the only pant that showed definite signs of the stress from the bright light in my orchid tank. I put it on the middle shelf which was getting the most light before I lowered the levels and removed one tube from the fixture.

Other plants were there too but none of them looked any different.
Kuntrarti Rarashati did. Leaves became dark with purple veining and not fresh and crisp as they were before:



I moved it to the front, to the lowest place - farthest from the lights. Hope it will be ok.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Fan is installed.

Installed is probably too strong a word. All I did - just hung it on the s-hooks in the top left corner:



I didn't really have any problems with mold yet since I don't keep any water at the bottom of the tank and usually open front doors and top lid for the night when the lights are off. Air flows through the tank and brings down temps from 25C to about 20 and humidity from 85% to about 70.

Also I re-built the levels to make them a bit lower because light was too strong for the middle shelf. Here is how it looks now:



I put masdies in the corner with fan:



Seedlings in compots are hiding under the larger plants: