Imagine you walk out to your greenhouse in the evening to mist your Orchids. Then imagine walking in and seeing all 22 of your orchids laying on the ground outside the back door with the shelves they were sitting on also laying outside on the ground. What a mess Well, I can see I've got my work cut out for me tomorrow. Not only re-potting orchids but I also have to try and rescue as much of the String of Bananas that I had in starter pots on the shelves. At least I managed to rescue all but one of my humidity trays. I did make sure I'd stabilized the shelves better.

What happened Chris?

Jim

I would not be pleased at all! Yes, do tell what happened?

I'm not rightly sure what happened. I noticed the shelves were leaning a little backwards the other day but then seemed stable enough when I moved them. These are the large plastic ones you get at Lowes that are supposed to hold a lot of weight on each shelf. What I had intended to do was get my wife to help me put a couple of standard bricks under the back to level them out but here the old adage comes to light 'never put off until tomorrow what you should do today' or something like that. Anyway, yesterday was 'feed orchids day' and I also refilled the humidity trays. I guess the combination of the weight of the wet orchids and the newly filled trays is all it took to tip them over. At least I've got plenty of new orchid bark to repot them all with. I think when I get the other greenhouse put together I'm going to get a couple of long tables and move the orchids onto them instead of leaving on the shelves where they are now. But, as they say 'there's no use crying over spilled orchids' just chin up and move on. I'm sure they'll be OK, they are really doing good too, all are getting new leaves. They look a lot better than they did when I 'rescued' them from Walmart.

So, lesson learned. Always make sure your shelves are stable before putting a lot of weight on them.

I guess you will be a little busy!! Glad to hear your Orchids are otherwise doing well!

That I will be Ursula! Thankfully for once it's a cloudy and rainy day here in Texas so I won't have the sun heating up the greenhouse. Of course the humidity will probably kill me.

Oh dear..hope you fix it up soon.

Took me almost two hours but I've finally got them all put back up again. I had to repot 20 there were 2 that somehow escaped any harm. I think my best bet is to go ahead and get my tables for the orchids. I can set them up and then put all my potting mix and so forth under the tables. That way I won't take a chance of this happening again. I also found one flower spike that has grown out of an old one that I had trimmed off when I bought the orchids. So, I'm going to ask a newby orchid grower question. I have the stakes and lots of the clips when do I stake this one up? It looks like it's growing straight out of the old spike and I don't want to try and bend it to stake it up





Sorry that it's kind of out of focus.

I wouldn't try to stake that flower stem, Chris. Phal flowers generally cascade gracefully over the leaves by nature. If you just let it be, the flower will face outwards nicely on that stem.

I think the box store orchids are all staked up so they can get more of them in a box without breaking off the flowers. Like a lot of things they do for the sake of volume selling, it's not the way the plant was meant to grow.

A suggestion for stabilizing your shelves: put some large jugs or buckets of water on the bottom shelf, or around the legs. IF you have a bottom shelf just off the floor, use it for something heavy so they will want to stand up better. Right now, all the weight is high up so you can see your plants better, but they are top-heavy and will be more unstable.

I have some really flimsy shelves, but they've never fallen over because I keep 5 gallons or so of water on the bottom shelves.

Thanks for your suggestion Elaine, I stopped on the way back from the VA this morning at Walmart and picked up two 20" x 48" tables. I feel much better having them on the tables than on the shelves. I didn't realize that about not staking the stalks. Wish I'd have known that before. I had a nice one back in July that had 4 buds on it but I accidentally broke it off trying to stake it up.