Welcome,
we hope you enjoy what we have to offer. Our nursery is situated in the picturesque Yarra Valley, Victoria, and specializes in cool growing orchids. We developed our own breeding lines over the past 25 years and draw on a life time of professional growing in the orchid industry dating back to the early sixties in England, followed by The Netherlands and in Australia since 1973.
The new Masdevallia list as promised:
Our Hot 100 (+3) divisions
A Masdevallia division list of our good plants is available now.
Summer News from Three Bridges
Well the Festive Season is over and we trust you had a good time. As Christmas was a pleasantly nice day we could leave the nursery to its own devices for the day and enjoy a family get together. Since then however its been all hands to the pump, literally! We had bother with our system just when the weather turned unpleasantly hot. Luckily we had it up and running before it got to 42 C and just as well. You can't be without water when the temperature gets in the high 30's or more. I just heard we have had a record number of hot days already so it seems we can expect more and will have to be extra vigilant with our orchids.
What to do? First, use extra shade. Much better to over do it. Use darker colours. If you are using white, cream, beige etc., try an extra layer or change to green or black.
2. Put the cool growers; Masdevallias, Odonts., etc. as low as possible or move them to an outside spot in the shadiest area you have. Be careful not to have them under benches where all the water from bigger plants runs over them. they will get too wet and get the fertilizer run off which could well be too strong.
3. Keep up the humidity. For Masdevallias 75% - 80% is good. Sometimes it will be naturally high other times you have to work at it.
4. Keep the air movement vigorous. High humidity with no air is no good. Evaporative coolers are fantastic when the air is hot and dry. For our cool growing high altitude plants they are almost essential if days this hot are a regular occurrence.
5. Water late or early. get the best value from your water. The plants will love to absorb the water during the cool night. During the day use mist to keep the moisture up.
6. Be super observant. If you see signs of distress, yellow leaves, brown leaf tips, leaf drop, check out what is going on and take action.
The good news is that all this warmth will get your plants growing well. Keep up the diluted fertilzer and stimulants like Eco C-Weed. When the weather cools in the Autumn get the shade off again or reduce it. Move plants back to brighter spots. Often we find growers leave their plants in the shade too long and suffer the consequence with poor flowering.
We will be at the Tesselaars Garden and Rare Plants Expo on Feb. 23-24 in Monbulk so come along and have a chat and get some new plants for your collection. It's a terrific venue and event not to be missed. Ask us for discount entry tickets.
Masdevallia divisions are now established including many recently awarded varieties. Our collection of choice varieties is huge and we can offer you fantastic quality plants and reasonable prices. We are often 1/2 the price of other nurseries so check before you buy.
We have a great selection of Odontoglossum Intergenerics, mostly of European origin and not 'pirate clones', ours are all genuine imports from the true source. The plants are grown in cool conditions to make them tough and adaptable to real world conditions.
The Sarcochilus and Zygopetalum seedlings are looking great with many new colours and colour patterns coming on line. We have Sarcochilus seedlings from Neville Roper one of the leading breeders in NSW with many awards to his credit. Available this Autumn, some 1st releases at Tesselaars Rare Plant Expo.
