Welcome,
Dear customers,
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.
New Miniature and Intermediate Cymbidium clones listed 19/01/09
New Zygopetalum seedlings listed 5/05/09
The new Masdevallia list with photos as promised:
Our Hot 100 (+3) divisions
A Masdevallia division list of our good plants is available now. Click here.
For the new cultural notes for Masdevallias check the cultural notes tab.
If you are looking for the cultural notes written during the bush fires check the cultural notes tab. (top right hand side of this page)
We have built up some good stock of Odontoglossum Inter generics and now list a considerable number. odontoglossum All our stock is grown in a cool nursery so the plants are not soft warm grown. It takes us a bit longer to get them to a saleable size but they are far stronger in the process which will help most growers. The size we sell them at gives you every change to flower them within the next 12 months, or often less. They will of course take another year to build up to give a mature flowering. Most of the clones we offer are imported from the Dutch firm Floricultura. They cost us more but they are well tested reliable plants that have proven qualities.
Potting
We are now totally converted and sold on coir fibre as our preferred potting medium. The grade we use is 6-9mm. Washed once and then in another fresh change of water we add 75gm per block of Iron Sulphate and 75gm of Magnesium Sulphate. Then drain and the mix is ready to use. Most important when potting is to firm the fibre evenly and quite tight. We don’t mix anything with our coir fibre. However it is hungry and we add a slow release fertilizer when potting. This is our special orchid Osmocote which has a NPK 0f 9-5-15+Mg+Trace elements. It lasts 8-9 months, in practice it lasts 12 months. We add the grains in the bottom 1/3 of the pot once the drainage holes are covered. Liquid feed such as Manutec Blossom Booster is used every 10 days or so. Seaweed is also beneficial every so often. You will find this works very well. Pots dry out relatively slowly without becoming too wet.
We use the same coir fibre mix for all our genera, in all cases pot firmly being careful not to bury the base of the plant. Some small stones about pea size are handy as drainage and added weight to keep the plants upright. Cover the drainage holes to a depth of 6-8mm. Then some coir fibre, then Orchid Osmocote, then pot as described.
The blend we use is from Casetech, size 6-9mm. We have it for sale at $12.00 per 60 Litre block. Wash 2 times, drain and pot. As with any medium do not over pot. Make sure the fibre gets right through the root system. When you have 1/2 the pot full, add the Osmocote, not too much. A 65mm pot needs about 10 balls of Osmocote, 100mm pots 20-25. Make sure you don't bury the plant and firm down the Coir Fibre really well. This is important, you must pot firmly. When you do this the moisture levels will remain even. Most failures in Coir Fibre are due to over watering. Potting loose will aggravate this and you will not get the longevity from the medium. Currently we have good success with the following genera potted firm in Coir with Osmocote fertilizer; Sarcochilus, Masdevallia, Odontoglossum and all allied genera, Oncidium, Cymbidium, Zygopetalum, Coelogyne, Dendrobium, Pleurothallis and Cattleya.
Regarding Osmocote: We use and recommend only the following Osmocote 8-9 months release rate High K .See sundries
In the following weeks we will be adding new Sarcochilus seedlings to our list. Most bred by Neville Roper and Ted Elgood both leading Sarc. hybridizers. We are just waiting for them to establish in the new pots but they are already looking great. Some of the crosses feature Sarc. Fizzy Dove 'Kookaburra' a super new parent. Also due to be listed are Zygopetalum hybrids and some extra Masdevallia seedlings to add to the already long list. Divisions for Spring release are being divided now but the current list has some excellent varieties to choose from.