Plunge temperature for orchids

[Peter Maguire]

Waterproof plugs? How much water are you planning on throwing around?

I'm relying on the RCDs and a measure of common sense to protect me - it's worked so far. 

[Anthony Darby]

You'll see the RCD. That cuts the power if there is a short circuit. Here in New Zealand the minute plugs don't even have fuses. Not sure how they worked prior to circuit breakers?

[Neil]

You should definitely have waterproof sockets an IP rating of 4 for water for liquid ingress,  would be adequate for splashing water onto it.  An RCD will not protect you from a short circuit which you would get if you splash water on a socket

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Code

[mark smyth]

Plunge heated last night with the temperature set to 5. This morning my probe said the sand was 6.9C

[TC]

Has anyone experience of 12 volt lighting and heating in greenhouses.  I have thought about this for years.  12 volt lighting systems with transformers are available for outdoor garden use and could be utilised in a green house with a transformer safely tucked up in the house.
I do not like the idea of 240 volts a.c. in a wet atmosphere with the possibility of storm damage to the greenhouse leaving live cables exposed.

[Anthony Darby]

12 volts can kill if the current is strong enough, and Van der Graaf generators can produce 100,000 volts but the current is minute, so you just get a mild jolt.

[mark smyth]

Orchis mascula will not show itself until March for me, but saying that I do have 1 pot that are poking their noses above the surface.

My O. masculas are now growing fast. I dont know if its significant that the spotty leaved plants are well ahead of the plain leaved plants.

[Anthony Darby]

Is this outside Mark? Mine would have similar rosettes by mid December outside.

[SteveC2]

My mascula are not up yet and I'm not at all worried.  A walk around the local wood revealed no sign of any plants, but there will be thousands come mid April.    Their growth period will be connected to their place of origin / genetic make up.  Plants with a continental origin may grow through the winter and flower earlier.  For our native plants, sending up a shoot into the bleak British winter seems a waste of time to me, just a juict titbit for the slugs / deer with no great chance of growing much, although drowning is a high possibility.  it would be interesting to know when other British colonies start to grow.  Perhaps this explains the difference between Mark's plain and spotted leaved plants, different place of origin?  The early purples around here grow with masses of bluebells and have a very similar growth season, and there is no sign of any bluebells yet either.  The same applies to the man orchid, my plants of greek origin have produced huge rosettes with flower sheaths visible already whilst on our local venue there is no sign of anything yet.  I do not really think of these British plants as being winter green at all, more like a dactylorhiza with a short growth season.

[Tony Willis]

With the exception of my himantoglossum all mine are up,some species just showing but in the case of lutea and anatolica they are in bud. I should have my first lutea in flower in a couple of weeks.

[SteveC2]

This just goes to show the variability of these plants.  Past years suggest  that my plants are usually two to three weeks behind Tony's in flowering, but  this year none of my Ophrys are even thinking about producing spikes even though there are plenty of perfectly healthy rosettes.  Hope this isn't a bad sign!  And to emphasise the variabilty my Himantoglossum has been up since September, although it's just a  small tuber and will not flower this year.  Two years ago it flowered its heart out and I left the spike on to set seed with the result that the new tuber was tiny so now I'm rebuilding it up.  My first flowers will be either a Barlia (Himantoglossum now) robertianum or a Gennaria diphylla, both of which have advanced spikes and are notorious for flowering early. Even so they are some weeks behind last year when the warm autumn encouraged everything to grow.  This autumn / winter seems to have been cold / dark / damp for so long that I have to remind myself everytime I go into the greenhouse that it's only December.

[mark smyth]

I should have added to my labels the source of my plants. Some came from Germany and some from Greece.

My Himantoglossom 3 or 4 large leaves.

Air temperature here today is 12.5C. Ground temperature is 7.2C and the plunges were 6C without any heat on.

[Tony Willis]

Like Steve's himantoglossum my barlia (himantoglossum) flowered well last year and although it has some very strong leaves it is clearly building back up again and will not flower this year.

The received wisdom was that having flowered last year my himantoglossum would die as this is always the case in cultivation but it has in fact produced a tuber which I popped out of the pot today to have a look at and it does have a growing point although nothing is happening as yet. Clearly Steve's had not been told this information as his is growing again.

[SteveC2]

in June 2010 I carefully lifted my Himantoglossum (that's Lizard orchid to those who don't know) after the flowers started to fade and saw only one tuber which I thought was the old one so thought that it would die so left the seed to set.  I gave them to Andrew Bannister at Orchid Alchemy but he has had very little joy with them, perhaps because the plant must have been self pollinated?  At the end of the season I lifted the plant again and  once again found a very scabby tuber and to be honest I still wasn't sure if it was the remains of that season's or a new one.  So I potted it up in the old compost and low and behold in October last year a shoot surfaced which produced a small three leaved plant and a much healthier looking tuber.  This year's plant is a little bigger already, though still not big enough to flower so it looks as though it might take a while to get it back up to size, but I'm quite happy to wait.  Observation of the wild plants near Newmarket over the past three years makes me think that the same sort of process may be going on.

[mark smyth]

Here's my Barlia. The camera has shown something that the eye cant see. Is it virused?