Make an easy mini greenhouse for growing small orchids

摘要

Ihave grown almost every type of tropical plant in my regular greenhouses but have tended to specialize in orchids. For large, high-light requiring species or hybrids, a conventional greenhouse is best. However, most orchid growers eventually want totry to grow more challenging species, such as those that grow in wet tropics and in mountain cloud forests. The limiting requirements for such species are usually high humidity and often low temperature. I have not been able to get the exacting temperatures or humidity in my solarium (at left) which such plants require. Because of large trees that are poorly positioned, no sun enters the solarium until midday and then it is too extreme, often driving the temperature above 100 degrees F. Cloud-forest orchids and low-light jungle plants would soon dry out and die. There are regions in the U.S., especially along the Pacific Coast where the climate is suited to growing such orchids. Some growers in my (Philadelphia) region have enough swamp coolers to grow many species of masdevallias, lepanthes and other pleurothallid orchids but even they find some species to be a challenge, such as Lepanthes callodictyon, Dendrobium cuthbertsonii, Odonttoglossum crispum, etc.