Awww, gee -- I'm just lucky.
I don't have a greenhouse. Yet. I put all my plants outside in the Summer, in stands which is under shadecloth. The orchids that grow brighter (Phrags, Dendrobiums, Catts, Vandaceous) are on the South side of my house with about 60% shade. The Paphs are in a little greenhouse covered with shadecloth rather than plastic, and that is under a tree. It gets morning sun and some dappled sun the rest of the day. (There is a photo of this in Lynn O'Shaughnessy's Article on Pleurs in the current issue of Orchid Digest.) My Phals are in a corner, under shadecloth, that gets morning sun but is shaded by the house from about 11:00 on. This year I put my Zygos and all seedlings on the North-facing porch which got sun until about 10 am.
The rest of the year, the plants are in the house in two places. One is a sunroom where I put the intermediate growers. The other is in the basement in a "greenhouse" we constructed using PVC pipe covered with plastic. Inside are stands with fluorescent lights. This is where most of my Paphs and Phrags grow. This space has an oscillating fan and a small humidifier.
Inside, all my plants are on humidity trays so I can water each plant individually with the pot draining into the trays. When you have enough trays with water in them, it
does add
some humidity to the area. I used to use only rain water & snow melt, but this year I'm using rain water in the sunroom, and have a tap in the basement for well water for the plants down there. My well water is high in calcium and iron, but very low in other salts. I let the water set in buckets to warm to room temperature, both upstairs and downstairs. The well water's iron seems to mostly settle to the bottom of the buckets, so I don't worry about that. My orchids seem to like the calcium.
Outside, I water with a hose using my well water. The hoses are long enough that they warm the water a bit before I use it.
I fertilize mostly with the MSU formula.
My slipper mix is diatomite + CHC + a little sponge rock. A few slippers are in Semi-Hydo. I water Phrags twice a week, and most of my Paphs once a week. But for many of them, I use the "lift the pot" method to determine if they need water half-way through the week.
In a nutshell, that's about it. I doubt if it is that much different than what anyone else does. I think the key is to learn from the plants what pleases them. That takes time, and I'm sorry to say, many failures. But that doesn't deter orchid addicts! :smitten:
