FENNELL’S ORCHID NEWS 
Published by 
FENNELL ORCHID CO. 
Homestead, Florida 
Orchid Notes 
Transplanting Seedlings 
From Flasks 

HIS is the. most ticklish operation in 
orchid culture. If the plants pull through 
the first month out of the flask and start 
root growth they usually go on without 
much trouble. 
Freedom from disease and insects and 
correct moisture control are necessary. 
It is very hard to say exactly how much 
moisture — the pots should never be very 
wet for more than a few minutes but 
neither should they ever become very dry. 
Water should never be allowed to stand 
over night in the axils of the leaves of the 
plants nor on the leaves. 
The plants should be given plenty of 
light (as much as they'll stand without 
burning) we usually have about 24 shade 
and !/ full sunlight on our seedlings. 
Spray them regularly each month with 
Fenorco 1-550. Then you will never have 
thrips or scale trouble. 
There is great disagreement about com- 
post. The truth is that no one has found 
the perfect compost yet. 
Probably the safest, though slowest, 
method is to stuff the pots with damp, soft, 
brown osmundine, with the fibers running 
upright in the pot (see figure) and then 
cut the fibers off at the top of the pot with 
a sharp knife. 
Cur HERE 
ZL 3 
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— Pieces of osmun- 
eee - dine with fibers 
‘running length- 
wise. 
a 

Then, with a small dibble (a sharpened 
pencil is good) make holes between the 
fibers, place the plants in the holes and 
push the fibers back against the plants. 
Other composts are made of ground os- 
mundine, peat moss, charcoal, oak leaves, 
ground tree fern fiber, etc. in innumerable 
combinations — and of course this leaves 
out the sand-gravel culture methods which 
some growers like. 
We believe that all little seedlings, once 
they become rooted, do better if fed with 
a weak fertilizer solution. We feed them 
at the rate of about one tablespoon of 
Hyponex per gallon of water, watered on 
moderately once per week. 
Small seedlings of all the orchids we 
grow like plenty of heat. They should be 
given night temperatures above 65 de- 
grees — 70 to 72 is best, and day tempera- 
tures between 75 and 100 Fahrenheit. 
When temperatures go above 75 at night 
in summer, give more air. 
Watering should be done with a fine 
mist-spray. Be careful not to dislodge the 
small plants. 
(Continued on page 7) 

SLEIGH BEDS 
T. A. Fennell 
Y wife, Dorothy, (known to many of 
you as D. B. Fennell) has always had 
a hankering for antiques and particularly 
for bargains in antiques. 
She has never had the antique fever as 
badly as we both have Orchid fever but 
at times her antique temperature had 
been pretty high at that. 
I think her interest in antiques was high- 
est about 1942 while we were in Haiti — 
about that time it was right dangerous to 
sit in many of our venerable chairs and 
hardly a piece of furniture in the house 
was less than a century old. 
During this period I was asked by Presi- 
dent Lescot to look over a semi-desert re- 
gion along the north coast of the Republic, 
west of the town of Port-de-Paix, with the 
idea of possibly developing a sisal planta- 
tion in the region. 
The town of Port-de-Paix is an old one 
and off the beaten track. Probably not 
more than five or six foreigners visit the 
town in a year. When Dorothy heard I 
was going there she decided that it would 
be nice to go along and look for antiques 
while I was looking over the land. I 
warned her of the poor hotel accommoda- 
tions but she insisted and accompanied 
me. We were also accompanied by our 
architect-engineer, V. E. Virrick and our 
soils expert “Sim” Breaux. 
Dorothy speaks pretty good French and 
(Continued on page 3) 
TREE FERN FIBER 
A New and Better Material 
for Orchid Culture 
AR REE fern fiber is used to good effect in 
the growing of all epiphytic orchids in 
the tropics — we too can use this excellent 
material. 
The fiber may be sawed like wood, it 
rots more slowly than osmunda and it has 
the advantage of keeping the roots on the 
outside where they get plenty of light and 
air. It is generally easily drained, though 
it can become waterlogged. 
We use it in a great number of ways. 
We tie plants on blocks of it covering their 
roots with a small amount of osmunda 
and then hang them in the greenhouse, or 
place them on the bench as if the block 
were a pot (but be sure that there is ven- 
tilation and drainage under the block such 
as is afforded by a wire mesh or a slat 
bench — on a solid bench the bottom of 
the block may become waterlogged). 
We also use pieces of the fiber in pots 
as drainage when potting with osmunda 
and use the dust obtained from sawing 
the fiber in potting terrestial species. Crib- 
like rafts made of sawn sticks of the fiber 
are good for such genera as Phalaenopsis 
as their roots have many places to go with 
good light and air. 
Because of its slow rotting, tree fern 
fiber is probably lower in available food 
than is osmunda — we therefore soak the 
pieces in a weak fertilizer solution before 
using them and later feed the plants with 
it about every two weeks during growth. 
Tree fern fiber is hard to get and ex- 
pensive as it is not grown in the United 
States but it is well worth a try. It is par- 
ticularly recommended to those growers 
who want to leave their plants without 
repotting for several years and who want 
insurance against over-watering. We new 
have a sizeable supply available at prices 
shown elsewhere in this issue of the NEWS. 
