[Sue]

The purpose of this forum is to provide a space for people to put their inventories online. This makes it easy to determine if someone else here is growing a plant you have questions about (use the ‘Search this Forum’ option), and helps with keeping track of your plants (for when your labels fade).

You can only edit a posting within the first 24 hours. This makes it impossible to update your inventory in the same posting. Working around this problem is the reason for the rules following:

1. Each member starts their own thread. Post your inventory in your new thread. The date will be recorded automatically, so others will know approximately how out of date your inventory is.
2. When you’re ready to update your inventory, repost to your own thread.
3. Don't reply to anybody else's thread. If you have a question, comment, whatever, go ahead and post it in the appropriate forum. By not allowing replies to these threads we will ensure that our inventories are easy to read without scrolling through all kinds of conversation just to find the most recent inventory update.

Please note: RVO is a business, and does not wish to provide free advertising space for other commercial ventures. There is some risk of this in this forum, as it would be very easy for somebody to post their business’ inventory and simply include a link, or happen to mention from what company the plants could be obtained. For this reason, please adhere to these precautionary rules:

4. Don’t mention where you got your plants. In some cases this will be obvious by the clonal name. There’s no avoiding that, so don’t worry about that.
5. If you want to know where somebody got a plant, PM the person to ask.
6. If you yourself sell plants commercially, please don’t mention it. Doing so violates the terms and conditions of the site and puts your membership in jeopardy.
7. If you are looking to trade plants, post them on Orchid-bids auction site. There is no charge to list and trade plants. Post all wanted ads on Orchid-bids also.
8. Don't put dollar amounts right there in your inventory. If there's a specific plant you want to sell, post over in the Orchid-bids auction site. If you just put dollar amounts next to your plants, this is a little too close to just setting up shop and violates the terms and conditions of the site.

That being said, you are most welcomed to post plants for sell or trade on the Orchid-Bids site. www.Orchid-Bids.com Your plant will be advertised on the main page of the forum for all to see.

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I thought it might also be helpful to provide some format suggestions. I would suggest putting your inventory in alphabetical order, with orchids listed separately from any non-orchidaceous plants you might care to list. I also like keeping track of the maturity of each plant.

I would also suggest you write down everything on your label, including the parents of the cross, and their clonal names, if you have them. It might not seem important now, but it may be of interest to somebody else, or to you at some point in the future, and it will fade from your label sooner or later. Also, if you have no grex name, but only the parents, you might want to see if the cross has been registered. You can do a search of the RHS database here.

If you'd like to share something about your growing environment(s), this might also be a good place to do that. Another option that might be interesting would be to list the potting materials used for each of your plants, or the fertilizing regimens used.

The following are some abbreviations commonly used:

SDLNG = seedling, or seedling sized keiki
NBS = near blooming size (will be BS within a year)
BS = blooming size
PB = previously bloomed
SP = specimen size
NT = no trade/sale
TR = available for trade/sale
DIV = large enough to be divisible (i.e. for trade/sale)
S/H = in semi-hydro
P = potted
B = basket
M = mounted
HP = in full hydroponic or water culture
And of course
FCC = first class certificate
AM = award of merit
HCC = highly commendable certificate
CHM = certificate of horticultural merit
CBR = certificate of botanical recognition

If there’s anything you think I should add to this list, or any comments, questions, or complaints about the rules and guidelines for the forum, please let me know. We just started this, and there are likely to be some bugs to be worked out.