October 1, 2011
Summer Care For Orchids – Instruction For Care
We like to keep our orchids outdoors during the summer and we like to use the doorway between the dining room and terrace. So, we built and orchid case that was light enough to carry down into our basement about June 1 and back upstairs around September 15.
After much thought and numerous sketches, we designed our Plexiglas orchidarium. It is 3 feet wide, 18 inches deep and 5 feet 6 inches high. It has three adjustable shelves which slide up and down on four wooden posts and can be held at any desired height by wooden pegs through the posts.
Perhaps, the most unusual feature of the case is the manner in which we used Plexiglas. The 1/16-inch thickness which we used is very light. It is non-breakable. Therefore, it is a safe material to use with our three small children around. Also, it is easy to handle. You can cut, saw and drill it with electric power tools.
Furthermore, Plexiglas will not yellow with age and is said to have good light transmission qualities, one of the four absolute musts for successful orchid culture – the other three being humidity, temperature and ventilation.
The one drawback to Plexiglas is its high initial cost. To keep cost down, we decided on the 1/16-inch thickness which created certain problems in that a 3- by 5-foot sheet is as flexible as thin cardboard. Our orchid case would have to be rigid and would be useless if the material bent or buckled. We reasoned that, if we could fasten the edges of two pieces together rigidly at right angles, each piece would support the other, and our hunch was right.
At a hardware store we bought aluminum angle molding. Then we began with the 3- by 5-foot piece of Plexiglas for the back of the case. Laying it flat on the floor we drilled holes through it and matching holes through one side of the molding. Next we bolted the molding to the Plexiglas. We repeated this with the other long edge of the plastic. This gave rigidity to the Plexiglas. Full rigidity was achieved when the side pieces were bolted to the molding. Then the front piece was bolted on in the same manner.
After that, molding strips were bolted to the top edges. The top was brought up inside the case and bolted to the protruding edges of the molding, making the top of the case so rigid that it will not budge.
To provide proper ventilation a small section was cut out of the top with a highspeed model-maker’s routing drill and the piece hinged so it can be raised to any height, including all the way open.
The base is constructed of pieces of 2- by 2-inch fir, screwed together to form a rectangular frame around a galvanized metal tray 2 inches deep. This tray is watertight and in it are kept pieces of charcoal which vaporize the water that falls into the tray when the plants are watered.
The complete base consists of two courses of the 2 by 2 fir, one on top of the other. There are two reasons for this:
1. To provide a free flow of air into the bottom of the case, we drilled a number of 1/4-inch holes through the top course. These holes are left open at all times to keep air circulating without exhausting the humidity inside the case.
2. In the upper surface of the top course we cut grooves to accommodate the bottom edges of the four Plexiglas sides. The side moldings were cut so that 1/4 inch of Plexiglas protruded below them to fit into the grooves.
The case is not fastened to the base but simply rests in the grooves. Thus, to dismantle the case for the summer we simply drop the plant shelves to the bottom by pulling out the pins, remove the posts and lift off the whole Plexiglas “dome” in one light, easy-to-carry piece.
The next questions, of course, are “How do you operate it? Does it really produce results?” The operation is simplicity itself. In the morning we open the hinged ventilator in the top. On bright weekday mornings we spray the leaves and bulbs of the plants thoroughly with a bottle-type sprayer using rainwater collected from the rainspouts. At night we close the top ventilator. On Saturday mornings we give a good dose of rainwater to every plant that is not resting.
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Filed by neville1way at 1:42 pm under Uncategorized
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