I HAVE WAAAY TOO MANY STANHOPEAS !!
I got my first stanhopea as a small seedling in a plastic pot. I should have stopped there! What can you do with these things that gewt fairly large and must be in a basket, when you are limited to growrooms half the year?? Well, at first I had a rack (actually the side of a largew dog kennel) at the back of the small growroom upon which I could hang them. Then I started hanging them in fromt of the dining room window for the winter. Dry there, but it was an only partially-obscured west-facing window. Oddly enough, thre of them bloomed (my first stan blooms) in February that winter. The next winter, I rented space in a greenhouse - NO BLOOMS !! Go figure!
But I have learned a few things. A longtime grower remarked to me that when he weht to repot his stans, which were in plastic baskets with the slats being about an inch wide, he was mystified to find massive root growth wrapped around the inside of the pot where the slats were. From this I inferred that they wanted more moisture than they were normally getting. So, I put mine in phal.paph/phrag mix, equal thirds promix, fine bark, and #3 sponge rock. I try to keep them moist.
I also heard from a couple of growers that they found dead flower spikes pressed up against the slats of the wooden baskets when repotting. I felt that too much of the root area was obscured by the inch-wide slats, and that copled with the fact I had a couple dozen of these fro which I didn't want to buy expensive wooden baskets, I made my own. I took what is here called 'hardware cloth', which I have also seen referred to as 'wire mesh' in the half-inch size, and cut out 'plus signs'. Then I folded up the 'wings' and the center became the bottom of the basket. I 'sewed' up the sides with telephone wire (individual red,green,blue, or black, not the whole four-ply cable). The first few I spraypainted for durability; I later just used the galvanized baskets as is with no noticeable difference. I lined the inside with sheetmoss (later double-ply newspaper on a recommendation I found on the web) and potted up. The results? ROOTS! And flowers!
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