Gastrochilus japonicus

[Dorsetman]

Flowers a little smaller than the several other Gastro' species I have flowered so far, but with just as must charm. There are two spikes here. Plant is grown on the east wall of my greenhouse, but facing inwards, so it gets little direct sun - a position which seems to suit it very well.

P. S. The white stuff is not some new English orchid pest , but splashes of SlugClear - I sprayed everything in the greenhouse this morning, after discovering some flower damage on some Bulbophyllums. The rainy season we have had since late Spring ( after a positive drought in early Spring ) - has made the slugs and snails flourish like mad. Last week I had some tiny garden plants - plugs of Dianthus specis - arrive, and not wishing to pot them up immediately I put them outside the back door, for a while ; I thought about them at bedtime, and went to look they were surrounded by half a dozen slugs , of several different species , all 3 inches long, and one of the big Roman snails ( with a shell the size of a walnut) had already started to mow down the row - so I saved them in the nick of time.

[Paph]

This beauty is a very healthy plant and the blooms are awesome! Love it!

[mauraec]

Phillip says small cups of beer are great for getting rid of slugs.

Just a beautiful plant, Geoff! It reminds me just a little of my sedirea japonica - does it have a scent?

[Dorsetman]

Phillip says small cups of beer are great for getting rid of slugs.

Just a beautiful plant, Geoff! It reminds me just a little of my sedirea japonica - does it have a scent?

No scent, but then, as my younger son used to be very fond of saying - as his excuse - when he was quite small - "nobodys perfick"

[Cjcorner]

What a cutie! Love those little flowers...

[Dorsetman]

Beer is a good way of solving the slug problem, but not in greenhouses I think. Years ago I had a very long ( 120 metres) garden - although it was not very wide - , and the layout was one path which wandered from side to side along the length and passed through gates or archways in hedges, dividing itinto a series of rooms, each planted differently - the orchids were at the very far end.One year we had a great slug problem due to a prolonged wet spring and I got so tired of walking past all the damaged plants, and I turned to beer. I sank old yogurt pots in the ground, at intervals of a few feet along the length of the path - over a hundred of them , and filled them with beer - it took a lot so I bought home brew kits and made it by the gallon. Then I would walk up to the greenhouse at dusk, with a long cane, and when I came across a slug, delicately sipping at the rim, I would tip it in, so tht it could properly enjoy its fate. I also counted up as I went along. A few hundred in one trip- like as many as a dozen at one pot, was not uncommon.The pots actually filled with the things, and I had to empty them periodically (ugh ! ) I chalked up the score on a blackboard at the greenhouse ( normally used for shopping list reminders - buy coarse bark or whatever) - By the time I stopped later the same year, the score was over 11,000... Then, as so often happens in England, the weather dried up, and we had no rain for a long time, and the problem went away. I wish I could say that it permanently cured the slug problem, but of course it didn't. This was an agricutural area - cabbages were the local speciality -.,where probably the population in the surrounding fields ran to thousands per acre. But beer works - yes it does.

[Teena]

... I chalked up the score on a blackboard at the greenhouse ( normally used for shopping list reminders - buy coarse bark or whatever) - By the time I stopped later the same year, the score was over 11,000...

And that, Geoff, is 11,000 slugs that didn't get to reproduce! - martha

[mauraec]

Yuck! Phillip was delighted by your story - thank you!

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Cute orchid blooms. Sorry about the bulbo orchid and slugs... I think because it has been so darn dry here, we just don't have slugs this summer.

cheers,
BD

[Linana]

This is a beauty. Lovely.