Mounting: Bulbo tingabarinum & a Restrepia

[Mrs. Paph]

I just brought home these two lovely plants from Orchids Limited with the intent to mount them! :clap: I Finally got around to hanging plastic behind the indoor wire mesh hanging wall for my mounted plants and positioning it so that it runs off into trays and not onto the carpet, so now I can use a pump sprayer to cut down on time and give better moisture for things growing this way, but the Bulbo is a first for me. I have a stash of, or could locally find for a mount: cork slabs, smooth branches, cedar shingles, and EcoWeb. I know they generally like to be mounted, but being indoors is still a bit of a compromise to not peel the paint off the walls with humidity, so I'm hoping some Bulbo fans here will have advice on how much moisture retention I should aim for when mounting this. And should I expect it grow out in more or less one strand/string of bulbs, or will it go off in many different directions and slowly or quickly spread out? Thanks for any tips!! I'd better not get hooked on these though, b/c I know not all of them smell as nice as this one should :evil:

My current Restrepia striata is doing well enough and blooming on cork with some live moss growing on it (I just swiped some off the base of the brick on the house, and what do you know, it stuck and grew and has orchid roots running all through it for over a year now!). It seems to be doing even better (leaves coming out smoother) now that I can quickly drench it in place whenever needed. I think I will go with the same plan for the R. elegans After Paphs, mounted intermediate-warm plants with some combination of traits of mini growth, funky-looking blooms, frequent blooms, and/or fragrant blooms have become my other weakness

 

[NYEric]

What plants!? I don't see any plants!

 

[goods]

I don't grow either of those, but I grow a few similar Bulbos (yasnae and taiwanense) and other members of the genus Restrepia. My B. yasnae is mounted to cork with a sphag pad under the roots. I grow outdoors, so you may want to add a bit more sphag to make up for lower humidity. I also grow B. taiwanense in a small pot in sphag with styrofoam peanuts in the bottom fro drainage. Both of these species seem to be more "clumpers" than those that grow in a straight line or ramble all over.

I grow a few different Restrepias. Some are on TF, some cork, and a few in net pots with sphag. I mount the ones on cork and TF just like how I described with the Bulbos. I too try to find some live moss to get started on the mounts. If nothing else, it gives me an indication of when to water. The moss gets dryish looking right around the time the plants need to be watered again.

Watch out for those strange flowered minis! I started with just a few last year, and now I have enough to fill up a 30 gal aquarium and then some.

 

[goldenrose]

I have a tingabarinum, it's in a bonsai pot in bark(Orchidata). It's done very well in a pot, therefore I wouldn't be inclined to mount mine. I like mounts & have a lot of mounted orchids but this summer's prolonged heat really hit them hard so I'm hesitant. Definitely a sphag pad, as to the surface - I have no idea what it would prefer!
It seems to be more of a clumper.

 

[Mrs. Paph]

Thanks guys/gals! No need to search for a stick for the Bulbo then if it's more of a clumper, so that helps As for moisture and pot/no pot, I'm more afraid of the non-clear pot it's currently in than of mounting it :S At least if I can see the roots on a mount I can see better and sooner what, if anything, is going wrong!
Eric, I did try to make sure I got this under a heading that didn't imply pictures lol You'll get your pictures when they bloom, or maybe after they're established on the mounts if I think they look really good (or really bad)!