Summering outside

[sassylady]

I plan to summer most of my plants outside when the weather gets stabilized. What do you experienced growers do when you have downpours of rain? Do you have some kind of shelter? We can have some bad storms here in SC PA. Have a patio with NE exposure. Plants will be on a bench.. Any advice appreciated.

[cindiras]

I have two outdoor locations for my plants, northeast corner next to my house, some on a patio table, some on a 'bench' raised 6 inches off the ground. The other location is on a table under the east side of a large tree. They get rained on. After a heavy rain, I go around pouring water standing water out of pots.

[gardenguysorchids]

Carol, was great seeing you yesterday and love that cymbidium I bought from you. Hope I can get it to bloom. I summer my catts and oncidiums outdoors on my decks. The decks are shaded by a large tree but the orchids get great morning sun. The rain doesn't seem to be a problem since I transferred most of my orchids to bark instead of moss. This year I am using clay pellets on the orchids that I repot so I we see how that does outdoors. The main concern I have is with the rare hail storms we have but so far so good. I keep my phals and paphs in the basement and a few of my cooler growing orchids move upstairs with the air conditioning. This would be a great question to bring up at our May meeting--- please do so and remind me about it and I will make sure to set some time aside for a question/answer session before or after the program. Thanks for giving me this idea and for having joined the society. I would love to hear how other society members deal with weather related problems when summering their orchids outdoors. Thanks again for those delicious cookies you brought to the meeting.

[sassylady]

Thanks for the advice. I am enjoying the meetings and getting to know fellow growers. Great to see how many different people have different favorites. Will ask the question at the next meeting. Today I am going to --- get the Coelogyne I was outbid on. Glad you liked the cookies. Carol