Dog days of summer

[sadie]

It has been blazing hot around here the last couple of weeks. High temps and high humidity outside with high temps and air conditioned dryness inside. I was curious what the rest of you do to help the orchids survive the long hot days.

I find that I do have to water more regularly, of course. I also seem to need a flower fix because I find myself surfing orchid vendor sites more frequently . . . very dangerous.

[IdahoOrchid]

Most of my plants of paphs. I am finding it tough to manage their water, especially in opaque pots with bark mixtures. I am converting to s/h and that seems to help. A couple of the plants I have tried to transfer had horrible roots and are in intensive care. Nearly every plant moved to s/h has been responding favorably.

[Cjcorner]

I water more often and spritz them with stuff for foliar feeding in the afternoon to cool them off. I've got excellant air movement so the occasional misting doesn't hurt and I also use an anti-fungal spray alot more often as well. The heat can be bad for growing bacteria and fungus fast. A small fan, or ceiling fan can help alot as well.
Good Luck
Connie

[wetfeet101b]

It is weird. The past few days it has been 4 or 5 degrees cooler in my area.
It averaged around 92F in July and we were bracing for a much warmer August.
But August looks like it will be relatively cool. And we saw clouds... CLOUDS!

[Shaydra]

We actually had some really good storms that lasted more than 15 minutes today. More like 2.5-3 hours. Got really dark outside, too. It'd be easy to think I was working at about 10pm. (And it was only noon.)

[IdahoOrchid]

During the peak of Summer it actually is barely dusk here!!!

It was sub-60 degrees here this morning. ALMOST thought about a jacket but I knew it would warm up once the Sun got something going.

[sadie]

Thanks for commiserating. It was 100 degrees today and I have NO idea what the humidity was. Although I would guess that some of you further south had it even worse. This morning the air conditioner, set to come on in the house if it got above 82 came on at 6:30 am. Not a good sign. Fall is coming . . .

[IdahoOrchid]

Fall is coming . . .

Heard and saw the first Canada geese on the move this morning!

[Mehera]

Don't remind me. I love fall, but you know what comes after that, and it ain't orchid friendly. All of my oncids have been outside all summer. It's SO easy to take care of them like that. But come late September and I'll have to make them all cozy in the house again.

[hcubed]

The day length changes SO rapidly here that you can already feel fall coming in August with the days being noticeably shorter than in July,even though this past week has been pretty warms (high 70s to 80).

In winter we average 1-2 hours (!!) of sunlight (lots of dusk, but usually overcast). Of course in summer it's the opposite and is easily still only dusk at 11pm with the birds chirping again at 3am (short night!).