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ericpaph

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My name is Eric and I live in Memphis, Tn. I am retired from international buisiness, and have taken up growing orchids. I have been in it about 5 years now, and started with cymbidiums, which proved very difficult to get to blossom in our hot climate without adequate day/nite temperature variation. I have about 100 mature cymbidiums and zygos, and about 150 seedlings of different ages.
Since then, I bought about 60 different mature paphs and phrags, and unflasked about 30 flasks of seedlings which are growing nicely. On retirement I converted my old office space on the back of the house to a greenhouse covered with polycarbonate. I also added another room enclosed in twinwall. Now I am starting to add another small room to house my cymbidiums in the winter, and at a colder temperature than the other orchid plants will enjoy.
I am active in the Memphis Orchid Society, and am the volunteer work coordinator from the MOS to the Memphis Botanic Garden for work in their orchid greenhouse(s). They have little experience in the orchid area and are dependent on us for some supervision and assistance in caring for their plants.
My wife is retired from Delta Airlines, and we spend a good deal of our time traveling. I am an ardent fisherman (flycasting thru salt water trolling) and am a hobby photographer with 50 years experience having taken photos all over the world. We have relatives in England, France and Germany, and travel to Europe frequently.
Good Growing,
ericpaph
 
Pictures and Fishing

I have fished for trout (tying my own flies), salmon, halibut, tuna, mahi mahi, shark, pike, bass and tarpon as well as some others. In more recent years most of our fishing has been in Montana, British Columbia, locally for bass, and in Costa Rica.
My pictures of the plants are something that I will need to play with, as I have never put photos in a mail reply except as an attachment. This is an area that I still need to learn about. I am also hoping that some of the aprox 1,000 seedlings will start to bear blossoms sometime before the end of next year. Some, such as the cymbidiums still would take about 3 to 5 years to blossom, and I'm sure that some of the paphs will take several years to blossom also. The phrags and some phal seedlings look like they may blossom within the next few months.
Loren Batchman, Editor of The Journal of The CymbidiumSociety of America, was the souce of most of my cymbidiums, and got me started in planting all of my orchids in CHC mixes. I shred moistened coconut husk chips in a blender to use for potting up seedlings out of flask, going directly into 3" pots with excellent results.
ericpaph
 
Welcome, Eric!

I look forward to your photos of paphs and also the cymbidiums!
 
Hi. Eric. This is Eric. My ideal fishing trip would be to take a mountain bike and a folding 1 or 2 weight fly rod to a secluded Catskill stream and catch the old man of the water. Then on the way back spot a stand of native orchids and get some good photos. How does that sound? Cheers!
 

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