Moving Outdoors

[mayres]

Can someone please give me a good plan for moving my orchids out to the east side of my home for the summer and early fall? (About 50 or so plants) I concerned about the transition - how to aclimate them without burning them or otherwise stressing them. I have a variety of genera and was thinking of moving all but the phals and paphs outside soon.
Thanks - mike

mine go from in the house to covered back porch to desired location total time three weeks depending on the weather. the desired location depends on the type of orchid. do you have alot of phals?

[mayres]

I have maybe 15-20 phals - I was thinking of just leaving them indoors since they would get burned on the east side of my house where I'm thinking of placing the other types that will get direct sunshine till late morning. Cats, oncids, intergenerics and dends out together in a community area - see a problem with that???

Eastern light, or morning sun, should not hurt the phals or paphs. However, it may not be enough for the cats, oncids, and dends. They can take morning sun, but will need very bright sun for the rest of the day, and eastern light does not provide that. I give the catts as much sun as they will take without burning, even some early afternoon sun, and the rest of the plants get very bright shade from noon on.

[jerrymeola]

Reading these replies made me aware of something of which I am aware but realise I do not mention enough.

Light levels vary with the height of the sun in the sky. Summer sun in Florida is 11,000 foot candles in July and August around noon but in December-January the highest reading I got at noon was 4000.

Everyone needs to apply this to their geographic area.

Orchid126 mentioned he did not think eastern sun was sufficient to bloom cats and dens while phals and paphs did ok.

Here in Florida I recommd eastern light and afternoon shade for my customers and it is sufficient to flower cats and can kill phals and paphs, where I recommd no sun and total shade.

As we go geographically north the light levels will be lower on the brightest days. I really recomend everyone measure their light levels in order to know with what they are working.

Measuring light levels with an SLR camera

In general move the plants gradually to avoid shock.

I can not give more specific advice since mine never come in. They even stayed out for hurricane Wilma.

I do move plants constantly for sale and had a orchid in bud drop the dubs and then die in three days when moving it to a show.

Another time a Dendrobium annecpes specimum plant stressed so much in just three hours driving to a show that I thought it would die and could not display it. (it recovered)

[mayres]

Thanks Jerry - I am constantly amazed at how some species of orchids negatively react to changes in environment - even short changes - and see how many of us stress out later wondering what we did wrong ongoing when it was potentially something totally different. Enjoy reading your posts - how do you find the time with all those orchids to take care of?! Would love to visit your business some time if I ever come to Florida - but never been to the southeast before - a long ways away! Thanks again. mike

I noticed that mayres is located in Keizer, Oregon, and I realized that his eastern sunlight would probably be equivalent to mine in central New Jersey in zone 6, that's why I made the suggestion. And it would be much weaker than Jerry's in Florida. As Jerry pointed out, mayres, when you get advice on growing orchids, always, always, consider the source. Many people below the Mason-Dixon line have much different conditions than we do farther north.

[mayres]

I'm sure Oregon sun/light intensity is definately different than Florida - how much is a big question. I know I have put a phal in a NE (more east than north) window sill at work on Friday afternoon and had it cooked dead/brown by Monday morning when I returned to work. If I can find a source for a good sized piece of shade cloth I was thinking of "tenting" this over them outside against the east side of the house and then taking off one of two layers after each week. Will see how brave I get - it is still currently a little cold in the evenings outside - we are still getting mid to high 30's believe it or not. Thanks for the comments....