FENNELL’S ORCHID NEWS 


FENNELL’S ORCHID NEWS 
From The Orchid Jungle 
Published By 
FENNELL ORCHID CO. 
Homestead, Florida 

CULTURAL HINTS 
CROWDING—If your plants are 
crowded be sure to give them as much 
light and air as possible and keep them 
well covered with Fenorco D. D.T. 
Spray. Watch your watering also. Look 
out for black growths—caused by too 
much water. 
Crowded plants are liable to become 
infested with scale and other insects 
unless protected with Fenorco. 
Crowding can sometimes be alleviated 
by hanging plants from the roof—pref- 
erably over the aisles — watch these 
plants for sunburn—put your light lov- 
ing plants here, such as C. gigas and 
C. Luddemaniana. 
LIGHT—Watch your shading as the 
fall season advances—if it doesn’t wear 
off naturally as the light diminishes 
help it along by rubbing or washing 
some shade off. If you want good 
flower production next winter and 
spring be sure your plants get plenty of 
light this fall and winter. One of the 
real signs of a good orchid grower is 
the way he handles light—plants should 
have as much as they can take without 
leaf burning—if the plants are well 
conditioned thev can take a lot of light 
and remember that an occasional burnt 
leaf doesn’t hurt anything. If your 
bulbs and leaves are fat and heavy the 
plants have plenty of light—if the leaf 
and bulb color is yellowish your light’s 
O. K., but they’re not getting enough 
food. The color should be a light, 
bright green. If your plants are deep, 
dark green, the bulbs and leaves long 
and thin, then you don’t have enough 
light—trv reducing your shade grad- 
ually and notice the gradual thickening 
up of vour bulbs and leaves. 
CHECK-UP—Now is a good time for 
you northern growers to check up on 
your heating plant and the tightness 
of your greenhouses. Be sure the roof 
glass is tight to prevent loss of plants 
from icy roof drips. Check thermostats, 
ventilation and doors. 

An Invitation 
ORCHID JUNGLE—While we charge 
admission to the Orchid Jungle with 
competent guide service, for casual vis- 
itors, customers and members of any 
orchid society are admitted free. Just 
show the attendant at the gate your 
membership card or mention that you 
are are a customer and give him your 
name. 
Old Wives Tales 
T. A. FENNELL, JR. 
Throughout orchid literature there is 
a wealth of “old wives tales.”” Much that 
has been written, and much of what we 
hear every day, has little or no basis in 
actual fact, yet has a tremendous in- 
*luence on a great deal of our practice 
in orchid culture. 
If we are observant and apply a little 
common sense to our observations many 
of these old wives tales can be scrapped 
and replaced with simple common sense 
practice which will soon show most 
worthwhile results. 
By “old wives tales,” I mean such 
things as the idea “that orchids being 
air plants they do not need food.” Com- 
mon sense even without much horticul- 
tural knowledge tells us that growth 
requires food and if we look into the 
definition of epiphyte (air plant) we 
find that it does not stand for a method 
of foodless growth but merely for a dif- 
ferent method of procuring the food. 
By just such common sense reasoning 
we, here at the Orchid Jungle, started 
feeding experiments several years ago 
and now feed all of our plants, on a reg- 
ular schedule. 
Application of observation and com- 
mon sense to the general practices 
throughout orchid culture will show up 
many fallacies which when corrected 
will yield much better results, and which 
can be understood and properly eval- 
uated for future use. 
This common sense approach has an- 
other distinct advantage over “old wives 
tale” culture and its “magical” results 
in that the ensuing results can be eval- 
uated and therefore reapplied in other 
places and under other circumstances 
while “old wives tales” are generalities 
arising from one man’s observations and 
then copied year after year in the liter- 
ature. They may fit one case but cannot 
fit conditions say in both England and 
Florida. 
Another very common fallacy of orchid 
culture which might well come under 
our heading of “old wives tales” is the 
constant attempt of one grower to apply 
the successful methods of another grow- 
er exactly but under conditions very 
different from his own. A little obser- 
vation and common sense soon shows 
that such methods should always be 
adapted to fit individual conditions and 
very seldom would be successful under 
different conditions. 
So our recipe for successful orchid 
growing is: 
To: the traditional methods of orchid 
culture 
Add: your own observations and sea- 
son heavily with common sense. 

Le. POUSSIN 
This is the darkest, heaviest textured Le 
we have seen; very large and fine. 
Seed now available. 
FOOD 
(Continued from Page 1) 
We selected for the experiment some 
800 seedling plants in 1%” pots and 200 
more in community pots. These plants 
first received the Knudson solution 
(minus sugar and agar of course) then 
double that solution after about six 
months. Later we changed again to a 
solution of one teaspoonful of 6-12-6 
commercial fertilizer to the gallon of 
water. (The 6 represents the percentage 
of nitrogen, the 12 the percentage of 
phosphorus and the last 6 the percentage 
of potash.) 
The plants were soaked with the fer- 
tilizer solution every Sunday and wa- 
tered as needed with tap water in be- 
tween. Another lot of the same type and 
size was watered with tap water only. All 
the plants were in osmunda. At the end 
of the first 18 months the fed plants 
were nearly twice the size of the unfed 
plants—they have continued to be larger 
and stronger. 
At present these 1000 plants that were 
fed all along are flowering; they are in 
4 and 5 inch pots and some have already 
bloomed twice. None of the other plants 
has bloomed and they are fully two years 
behind the fed plants in size. 
As the result of the above and numer- 
ous other experiments we are convinced 
that feeding of orchids pays in relation 
to the amount of light the plant re- 
ceives. We feed as long as root action 
continues ( i. e. as long as the roots have 
the translucent green tips). When the 
plant is resting and the roots are not 
growing, we withhold food. However, 
here in South Florida our plants grow 
practically the year round and while 
they do we feed every week. In the 
north you will probably find that root 
action stops about November and doesn’t 
begin again until February or so. In 
that case we would not fertilize during 
this period of dormancy. 
