Paph. delanatii Bonsai

[Paphman910]

Humidity: 60-80% rh
Temperature: room temperature (18-30 °C)

Light intensity: my lux meter shows about 7000 lux (~ 700 fc ?). I use fluorescent light (light color 840 + 865) and I´m sure that this cheap lux meter didn´t show the right intensity in this case.

I have some paphs in another terrarium with lower light level and these plants grows in normal size and leaf color.

I don't think your lights caused your Paph delenatii to yellow and shrink in size!

BTW nice collection of orchids!

Paphman910

 

[Ernie]

Ernie, I just bought Epson Salt today, that will be the first thing I will change. The delenatii will be repotted after bloom.

Not all plants in my terrarium has pale or stunted leafs:

My error. I thought I read in one of your posts that this was the case. Apologies. Got a nice pic of the terrarium for us though!

 

[Ricky]

Got a nice pic of the terrarium for us though!

Thank you!
I think this one here is the best of my terrariums, with more light but without paphs.

 

[Paphman910]

Thank you!
I think this one here is the best of my terrariums, with more light but without paphs.

Wow! Beautiful setup! Did you make this setup by hand?

Paphman910

 

[Ricky]

Did you make this setup by hand?

Oh oh, my english .... what do you mean with that question?

 

[Paphman910]

Oh oh, my english .... what do you mean with that question?

I mean:

Did you build this vivarium or bought it?

Paphman910

 

[Ricky]

Did you build this vivarium or bought it?

The empty vivarium was build for me by a glazier. I´m too old to cut glass and stick the panes.
All the other work was done by myself.

 

[John M]

Your terrarium looks very nice and your plants look wonderful. Obviously, you do not have a general, across the board, cultural problem with all your plants, just his one delenatii. The moss on many of the plants is very attractive! Usually, I wouldn't worry about moss growing on top of a delenatii pot because delenatii is the one Parviflorum that likes slightly acidic conditions. However, whatever the issue is with your delenatii, it clearly has an issue of some kind. In my experience growing orchids (over 30 years), such a problem will be resolved by repotting the plant into fresh medium. It's just that simple.

I'd like to say: One thing that I really like about your plants is that they are all so clean. There are no weeds anywhere! I have a large greenhouse and too many plants. Weeds are a constant problem. I do love to see a collection of plants like yours that have no weeds at all! I hope my plants can look so good one day!

 

[Ricky]

John, with weed you mean ferns and other unwanted "guests" ?
Well, they always try to grow in my 2. vivarium because they love the high humidity. Nice work to pick them up.
But I never found one in my paph vivarium.

 

[Rick]

Gorgeous plant, Rick!

When I grew in the basement I also had an R.O. I stored my product water in 17 gallon Rubbermaid garbage pails; but, I always removed a couple gallons and added raw well water back in. The raw well water was high in minerals, especially calcium and my orchids grew like weeds. Eventually, I stopped adding the bit of raw well water to my R.O. water storage pails and my plants turned a sickly yellow. IMHO, pure R.O. is NOT good. It must have small amounts of nutrients added back in.....even if you feed regularly with a good fertilizer. After all, while rain water is very soft, it is not pure water by the time it reaches our storage bins...or the plants in nature for that matter. Thinking that rain water and R.O. water are basically the same thing is a big mistake.

Your experiences are very similar to mine John. I also started blending back a small amount of my crusty @%$@# well water into my RO with very nice results over the past year. I don't think there is any particluar micro nutrient that is making the difference, but even with a hardness of only 20-40 ppm there is a constant amount of 8-16 ppm of soluble calcium going to the plants or helping to remove a bit of accumulated K from the potting media.

Recently I took 1/4 tsp of EPSOMA peletized lime and dissolved in RO water and added to my fertilizer mix. Not only would this add another dose of Ca and Mg, but also a dose of bicarbonate to run the pH up a little. It's only been a week now, nothing died, and a few plants got a little greener or poked up the tip of a new leaf. But I'm going to have to actually pull a drainage sample and do this over the long term to see if this method of using lime has any efficacy.

It's true that mixes become acidic over time and RO based (especially with fert added) systems afford no buffering, but mag sulfate (or calcium nitrate) solution is also slightly acid by itself (no OH or HCO3). So by seeing positive results with Epsom salt addition on plants in old (acidic) potting mix doesn't logically conclude that mix pH is the driving factor to the chlorosis conditions we are seeing.

With lime addition you get both the cation additions (Ca/Mg) but buffering anions (OH/HCO3) that raise pH.

So if we compare the results of adding cal/mag solutions with nitrate/sulfate as the anions to adding cal/mag solutions with bicarbonate as the anion we see very similar improvements indicating that at least for the present pH condition of a potting mix that the cations were more important than the buffering condition (pH) of the mix.

 

[Rick]

I think most of your plants look excelent Ricky:clap::clap:

Especiallly the mounted plants.

In the pic of potted paphs, I see several with some yellow older leaves and generally lighter colors than I am getting on my paphs now. Yes older leaves are more prone to yellow, but I did see the amount of old leaf yellow and drop condition decrease substantially with the shift away from K and increase in Ca/Mg.

In my recent theory on K toxicity I am speculating this may not have as much to do with specific tolerances of paphs, but that we tend to keep them in different potting mixes than other orchids that have a propensity to accumulate K (definitely more so than mounting or inert clay balls).

I have shifted many of my paphs into baskets using sphagnum moss to grow them more like my bulbos and phals. They now recieve a total fertilizer environment much more like the mounted plants and are responding favorabley.