Any Warnings/Advice?

[Jefforever]

I'm receiving:

U. quelchii x preatermissa

U. humboldtii x quelchii

U. quelchii "Mt. Wei"

U. nelumbifolia

U. nephrophylla "white flower"

I heard U. nephrophylla & U. nelumbifolia are good starter plants when learning to grow plants from the Iperua section. Does anyone have advice for either of these?

I think I can grow U. reniformis pretty well (vegetatively - no flowers yet :-( ), but I'm still a little worried about plants from the Iperua section.

As for the others, I think I'll use Pyro's slack potting technique. It's really done wonders for my U. asplundii!

And yes, I know U. quelchii is one of the hardest...

Any tips appreciated!

 

[rattler]

your ordering quelchii and are worried about nelumbifolia and nephrophylla?.....ok....keep nelumbifolia in soggy LFS....nephrophylla will grow in peat or LFS but seems to do better in LFS for me.....i kept it in a regular pot filled with LFS in a tray with my sundews and it did fine and flowered on a regular basis......

 

[Jefforever]

Yeah, but I have loads of info about quelchii from the cpuk forums.

Also, Pyro's slack method for the quelchii should do it, right?

Thanks for the info about the others.

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"I haven't purposely subjected it to a dry season, but it does grow in a very open medium - as I said, the same medium I use for my highland neps (fine orchid bark, rockwool, perlite, charcoal and NZ sphagnum with a sprinkling of sphagnum moss peat)
I also use the same for all my helis too.

All my plants are overhead watered frequently, most get as much light as I can give them without overheating the greenhouse.

Humidity kept usually above 70% at all times, the U. quelchii is also quite close to the hydro-fogger plume which will very lightly mist it in the day.

Substrate: The most important thing is to use NZ or Chilean (from Chile) dead sphagnum moss. Whether it is long fibered or not does not have any influence on the growth of U. quelchii under my cultivation. Very good NZ stuff I obtained from the US two years ago but I took 10 kilos and air transport plus price of the sphagnum were about 200 US$ if I remember correctly. My now preferred source is a German orchid grower and -seller who is doing a lot of wholesale and brings it into the country from the Netherlands. The Dutch do have some of the best gardening people/nurseries on the continent.
The European sphagnum moss is NOT as good as the other stuff.

- Pots: No influence on plant growth, a round pot allows the runners to circle and not to clump in the edges so I prefer it for U. quelchii. Sometimes I used transparent pots to follow the under ground growth of the plant but I gave up because green leaves developed at the wall of the pots and didnot come to the surface forming complete leaves.

- Temperature: I have some pots in my warmhouse where temp. are between 18 and 22 Celsius during the winter up to 35 Celsius in the summer. Some are in my coldhouse together with European temperate Pinguicula, SAF and AUS Drosera with temps down to 8 Celsius during the winter. It seems that lower temperatures induce flowering in that species.

Fertilizer:
Macronutrients: Plants exposed to mild fertilizers as I use for hatching Darlingtonia, Sarracenia and orchid-seedlings seem to respond with darker green leaves and better growth. At the moment I am experimenting with addition of orchid substrate to the NZ sphagnum but it is too early to tell any results."

- Various cpuk members