Pleione forrestii compost and cultivation requirements

[ian mcenery]

Mainly through the kindness of friends I manage to grow a dozen or so pleiones some even in the open and find that in general they are not too difficult using some of the standard compost mixes. For the last couple of years I have used a variation of the one suggested by Paul Cumbleton and found that it works well.

The exception to this has been P forrestii. Using the standard compost doesn't seem to have worked for me with the plant making little root with the result that year on year the size of pseudobulb has reduced and will soon disappear.

Can anyone suggest a compost and regime please

[Graham Catlow]

Hi Ian,
There are more experienced Pleione growers on the forum than me but this is what I do and my P. forrestii seem to do well enough for me. They haven’t increased as fast as some of the others and that may be the way I grow them or just that forrestii as a species increases slowly. Hopefully others will be able to confirm this.

My basic mix is composted bark, pine duff, beech leaf mold and chopped wood moss all in about equal amounts. I then add large pine needles to open the mix up.
For the forrestii I add additional chopped moss.
This year I have added some SEER Rockdust as an added mineralisation. I have no idea if it’s a good idea or not. Not sure if I will be able to tell in the end either, but figured it couldn’t do any harm.

P. forrestii are a little early into growth for me as I only have a temporary plastic greenhouse mainly to over winter some less hardy things. They spend a few weeks in here as they start to flower. Once the chance of frost is gone they sit out in the garden for the summer and autumn until the leaves fall off. I then clean and dry the pseudobulbs and keep them in the fridge where the temperature remains constant. They come out of the fridge in February as the flowers start to emerge from dormancy.
They are positioned south facing where they get plenty of sun from early morning until about lunch time and then the shadow of the house shades them from the main heat of the day. They are watered in the evenings to keep them moist; although this year’s rain did that for me. With this compost I don’t feel there is the need to feed.

This may not help if you don’t have access to the compost materials.
Graham

[Darren]

In 2011 for the first time I ended the season with P forrestii having a bigger pseudobulb than it started with. I found some advice on another forum which said that it dislikes having its pseudobulbs wet. So I potted it with the pseudobulb resting in a layer of very coarse dry bark over the normal mossy compost. It was the only one I kept under a cover (though in a shady spot outdoors) all summer and watered around the pot rim to keep the pseudobulb dry. It seemed to work but is at odds with Graham's method and he grows it better than me.

[ian mcenery]

Thank you Graham and Darren.

Your comments re compost and regime are helpful. It may be that I should also be a little more careful with the watering as only having a single small pseudobulb  watering and pot size are always difficult to judge. I suppose like most bulbs they enjoy company.