Paphiopedilum stonei wild in situ

[troy]

I'm trying to stay away from large number potassium nitrate, I've been thinking about baskets if I go with baskets I'm going to have to get a water rettentative addition to my potting mix because my temps are up to almost 80 in the afternoons my humidity is never lower than 65

 

[Trithor]

Has it a good roots system? Because usually it is the reason why plants are not growing. Paphiopedilum culture is a good culture of there roots :wink:

The roots seem fine. I have 4 clones and all seem slow (way slower than my roths plants). I tapped one out of the pot and the root growth is good, not fantastic, but certainly good.

What is the water quality like? Is the water low in TDS and is the pH at 6.4-6.8 range?

It has been a while since I tested my water. The other plants seem to be doing OK with the water, kolo, wilhelminae, roths, and a whole range of multi hybrids all seem happy with the water.

Have you tried baskets?

Are you bright and warm?

Low K turned them around for me, but keeping N high can make pot management tough to the point of chronic underwatering (to reduce root rots). These guys grow fast with lots of water, but if you end up witholding water over concern of potting mix integrity and root rots, they end up stunted.

I have quite a few plants in baskets now after your success (henryanum, villosum, philippinense) but no stonei in baskets yet. Perhaps I should move one to a basket today? The problem is that my humidity is perhaps a bit low for basket culture. I am planning on fitting a misting system this coming summer.
This is the South African 'Highveld', things don't get much brighter than this. Excessive light is one of the major problems that we have. Warm in summer, definitely yes! But in Winter we get cold, this might very well be one of my biggest problems as I don't heat at all. Our winter night temps drop to around zero C quite often, but by 10 in the morning the greenhouse is above 22 C. My lowest greenhouse temp this winter was 3 C (but only a brief period just before dawn)

 

[cnycharles]

For your cold times if you had some big drums that you could fill with water and paint black that could help hold done heat through the coldest part of the night and it would probably help

 

[Trithor]

I don't have the space unfortunately. I am considering extending the greenhouse next year to incorporate the swimming pool. No one swims in it anymore now that the kids have grown up. I am hoping that the increased volume of the greenhouse, coupled with the large volume of water will stabilize both temperatures and humidity?

 

[cnycharles]

It should. You could also pump some water from pool to misters in GH to raise humidity and that would also help cool (think swamp or fan pad cooler)

 

[Rick]

Our winter night temps drop to around zero C quite often, but by 10 in the morning the greenhouse is above 22 C. My lowest greenhouse temp this winter was 3 C (but only a brief period just before dawn)

This may well be a big problem Gary. I never let the GH get below 15C

But this winter I probably had extended periods (cloudy and freezing worse than usual) when I never got above 20C.

Hard to account for the extreme exposure duration. Any other warm growers (low elevation Phaleanopsis) that have problems in your collection?

 

[Trithor]

I have some vandas and similar growing in the same conditions. I will post a picture of them tomorrow. I am sure that the low night time temps are a problem, the question is how much of a problem. Our daytime temps are most often above 15, with greenhouse temps above 23. The temps drop quite sharply at sundown, with a lag of a few hours in the greenhouse drop, so that most winter nights the greenhouse only gets to about 10 just before dawn and starts to climb as soon as the sun hits the greenhouse.