Thanks for the info, Bert. As you know, I am in Starkville, perhaps 125 miles south of you.
When living in Pascagoula (1971-1995) I attended the Mobile, AL annual show several times. I don't even know if they still have their club. Back in those days, when our weather was much warmer along the Gulf Coast, there were several nurseries that dealt in tropical plants and some had a nice array of orchids as well. That is where all my love for tropical plants really started. In 1981, I had a huge, 34x14' glass over marine aluminum greenhouse built. The bottom 3' was brick. Quite a greenhouse. I could grow plants up to 10' tall! Hurricane Elaina (1985 I think) destroyed part of it and I had it rebuilt. I had already moved long before Katrina, but Katrina completely destroyed it, brick-work and all. It was never to be rebuilt.
I have now built three more GH's, the first one "free-lance" when we first moved to Starkville, and that one stood up well for 12 years, though it was pretty ugly. We moved again almost four years ago (still in the same neighborhood), and now I have built two "kit" GH's, one dedicatd to orchids and the other to "everything else tropical". At least that was its name until this fall. I have perhaps 3 dozen orchids in the everything else GH. Just ran out of room in my orchid GH. Counting all my "baby" orchids, I have approximately 400 orchids in that one, 10x12' GH. It is loaded!
I have really gotten addicted to growing my orchids from flask/plugs now. It is so much more a challenge to grow them from when they are as large as a fingernail. In my experience, the mature BS orchids, with their multiple, large leaves and extensive roots, are child's play compared to the tiny plants. At my age, and this is prehaps common, it does not take much to excite me. To see an orchid plant, grown from a seedling to its blooming size, perhaps 3-5 years, just light's me up! My wife says that perhaps, just perhaps, I enjoy my tropical plants too much. Is that possible?
