tough plants

[janet_a]

so my phal type den, which is blooming and top heavy despite being potted in a clay pot in lava rock, just took a dive off the plant stand (2.5' high) into a couple of pots of teenaged amaryllis sitting on the floor. i knew this would happen one day; i figured, well, with all the broken canes likely to result, i can experiment with stem propping.

the damage: one pot of amaryllis got its ID tags knocked out. the den has a broken leaf.

don't let *anyone* tell you orchids are "delicate".

[Cynthia, Prescott, AZ]

What you need is multiple nested clay pots. Of course this takes up a lot of bench/window sill space. So my solution is to hang all my Phal Dens. I long stiff wire is bent into a U shape, with one leg of the U only an inch long. The long leg is pushed up thru on of the holes in the bottm of the pot, and, with the previous adjustment of the bottom of the U to the distance between holes on opposite side of the pot, both legs of the U slide into the pot. Then the top of the long U leg is bent to form a hook to hang where ever is convinient. The canes are then twist tied to the wire to keep the pot upright. Something you might find useful sometime. Cynthia, Prescott, AZ

[jerrymeola]

Maybe we should continue this thread as "My most abused orchid". We all probably have stories like this.

I had one small plug (one inch pot size) last summer that was in the truck for two weeks bare rot and dried, fell on the ground and stepped on so many times it was a shred. Since I did not have the heart to discard it while it had some life, I re-potted and put it on the shelf. Looks like it is big enough to have a chance of flowering this summer. It actually is growing faster than many of the original batch that were not abused.

I have a number of personal orchids in pots on the pergola (8 feet up) in my garden and the cats have a tendency to walk over them and occasionally to get into fights up there knocking them off. Result a broken pot but the plants react like nothing happened.

[janet_a]

i've got the bigger den in two pots; may have to put the smaller one in another one too. -sigh-

i'm in a rental house so i try to minimize the number of holes i put in it.

[Judith]

LOL!! Didn't you know that's the way you get African violets to bloom??? You abuse them! They get scared & get on with the reproductive cycle or something like that.