The Prodigal Orchid Grower

[Gilda]

Greetings and Salutations to all old and new ST members. It's been a while since I've posted.

I went through major orchid depression after losing over half of my collection to a chemical product I used. I lost most of my paphs :sob: in Nov/Dec 2013. The loss continued on for several more months but now what has survived is doing ok.

I was fighting mealies (still am) and used a granular product with fertilizer ..this was after walking away from that product many times BECAUSE it had fertilizer in it. I must have had a senior moment ,but I paid dearly for my stupidity.

I still love orchids..still grow a lot of phrags ,which wasn't affected because mealies don't like them and they didn't get treated. Phals weren't affected but the paphs roots turned to mush within two weeks. Even repotting asap couldn't pull them through.

It is good to see some familiar names, Slipperking Rick ( your awarded Inti's Tears ,Red Dagger's has a spike) , Dot (Cardinale is in bloom), Yay Bessae Eric ....it's good to be back at my "orchid home".

 

[Justin]

welcome back!

 

[Heather]

Welcome back, Gilda!!! Always good to have you here.

 

[Paphman910]

Welcome back! Have not heard from you in a while!

 

[Bob in Albany N.Y.]

Gilda, glad you are back. I thought maybe you were no longer interested in orchids.

 

[SlipperFan]

I'm very happy to see you back, Gilda. I always enjoyed your posts and now look forward to them again. Sorry for your difficulties. That would be so discouraging -- I don't know if I would come back from that.

 

[Migrant13]

Welcome back Gilda. Glad half your collection survived.

 

[eggshells]

Welcome back. If you need any help stocking those shelves maybe some of us can help.

 

[NYEric]

Welcome back. Sorry to read about your problems. Think of the positive, all the room for replacement orchids!

 

[cnycharles]

Welcome back. It's okay, I did two major population reductions due to ill advised complete collection repotting experiments, lost ambition for a while

 

[JeanLux]

Hi Gilda, welcome back!!!! Jean

 

[Lmpgs]

Welcome back! Glad to have you here, after long time.

 

[Clark]

 

[mrhappyrotter]

Welcome back. If I recall correctly, you used to have a plant (or some plants) from Breckinridge? I used to love going there when it was open and just salivating for hours at the rows and rows and rows of all variety of phals, but Mark had some great paphs and phrags as well as plenty of other genera.

 

[Gilda]

Welcome back. If I recall correctly, you used to have a plant (or some plants) from Breckinridge? I used to love going there when it was open and just salivating for hours at the rows and rows and rows of all variety of phals, but Mark had some great paphs and phrags as well as plenty of other genera.

You are correct....most of my paphs and a few phrags came from Breckenridge. I still have a few of those. It was a fun time buying all those when he was going out of business. Mark encouraged us to buy and sell on Ebay which we did for a while.....it started out fun but ended up being a LOT of work BUT I got some amazing orchids for my collection.

 

[Trithor]

Welcome home (from a newbie)

 

[Gilda]

Thank you all for welcoming back into the ST fold !!