hi gailjeanette,

"a covered north facing porch...." up there in MI? It wouldn't work 'down here' in Md. for Cattleyas.

I don't grow Dendrobiums. No comment.

Good Luck with your "south facing window...patio door actually..." The good news? You have already recognized your strongest place! :-)

--Stitz--

I have to agree. The choices as presented make the patio door the better way to go. Still, I have to think you are losing a lot of light between 11:00am and ~3:00pm to high sun angle. True, you don't want that high angle sun direct, but you want some of it and currently you get none of it. If they were my plants I would have some source of artificial light timed to kick in around 11:00 am or use torch poles to spread shade cloth over the area just outside the patio doors so the plants could get just the right amount of high angle sun.

H

How long have you been growing these plants? Did you get flowers growing them in the patio door?

I have Catts and dens in South sun. If your plants have not flowered with your setup, you need more light. Do it gradually, or as Howard states, use something to give some shade during the hottest time. Even a patio umbrella tilted can be used.

Remember, you are making your winter flowers now. Without enough sun, you'll get leaves.

Jane

I live in Ohio, and put my orchids on a south facing, screened in covered porch. The orchids grow well, and seem to love the heat and humidity, but there is just not enough light. All my blooms come after the orchids are indoors, under the lights. I grow primarily phals and catts, with a few dends and oncids. If I were you, I would not do this unless you can add significant light!

So we're trying something new this year. My husband has bulit me some step like shelves with a slatted top , which we are going to put out on the south facing patio, covered with shade cloth, since I've sunburned more than a few orchids when I've mistakenly left them on the sun on this same patio. I'm hoping to set it up this weekend, and I'll try to figure out how to post a picture soon.

I'm really excited to give this a try, but will be setting the orchids out gradually in hopes of not sunburning anything!

I have had good luck with flowering with my current set-up which is inside in a south facing patio door...
putting them out gives the benefit of fresh air and the daily shower with the hose, well water, I can give them...

I use rain water inside...maybe this has helped...

I'm thinking I will put out 1/2 of them, not actually ON the front porch, but just off it in the shadow of the house (north side) and leave the other 1/2 in...and see what happens with each...

I never got very good re-blooming until I started putting them outside for the summer. The thing I ran into was that I added too many orchids one summer to fit back into the house. I was FORCED to build a greenhouse.

I have some of my orchids in a large, south-facing window - the window's open, though there is a screen. Because I am at work during the day, I don't always have a great sense of the kind of light the orchids are getting. Along the lines of what Howard said, I thought that my plants must not be getting a lot of the mid-day light right now, due to the very high angle of the sun (the longest day of the year was the 20th).

What I noticed over the weekend however is that the orchids are getting a lot of sun in the middle of the day, just not the early morning light, since that's shining on the north side of the building. Of course, the sunlight is not coming very far into the house, but the south-facing window is still very well lit for the better part of the day. I don't have row upon row of orchids at that window - about two rows deep, but they're all getting good light - if my orchids were any farther from that window they would not be receiving any sunlight.

Mike

Every year all my orchids go outdoors. All the catts and dendrobiums go into the trees. I take nylon rope, about 2x the thickness of work boot laces and tie a sling for the pots. All the catts, oncidiums, vandas (hang anyway) and dends go outside from about late May until September; even october for some of them. I do have a wire shelving unit for the smaller, lop-sided plants that won't hang for me. We have several trees around, and I start them on the North side of the house with some sun and they end up in all the trees and large shrubs as the summer progresses as I push the light limit for them. I always used to keep the humidity up, but in fact light is more important. Last year, almost all of my plants bloomed for me. This year, my goal is to have every single one flower. If they don't I'll just get rid of the ones too stuborn to bloom! I even put the phals in a covered porch so they get some direct sun at 8 am and again at 7-8 pm. It does wonders, give them all the light you can!!

However, raeading the above posts, I think that given the current situation, they are in the best place possible. I would seriously start plantng some trees or shrubs, lilacs and some magnolias would be a good start and offer an relatively open canopy and good places to mount orchids.

If you want to put your plants outside in the sun, you might consider a beach umbrella for part of the day.

A question: How have your plants been blooming? Do you get lots of bloom with them indoors? If so, you might keep them inside. But if you don't get lots of bloom, you might seriously consider finding a way to get them outdoors.

tstrombotn: "All my blooms come after the orchids are indoors, under the lights. I grow primarily phals and catts, with a few dends and oncids."

Are your plants blooming "on schedule"? Could it be that their natural blooming cycle doesn't include summer?

Yeah, Richard, the orchid enforcer held a gun to your head and said, forget about selling these extra plants at the next OS meeting, either you build a greenhouse, or I pull the trigger!

Brad - I envy you being able to put your 'chids in trees. The squirrels around here would think it was Christmas.

Gailjeannette - if your plants have been blooming where they are, then you've got a choice. Outside, they're vulnerable to all kinds of beasties that love orchid plants and flowers. If you've got squirrels.... Then there are the birds and slugs and aphids and on and on.

You can minimize the plants' vulnerability to all these, though. The fresh air and real light can't be beat.

My set-up is below, in case you haven't seen it. The patio gets unobstructed E/SE light but not from overhead because of the deck above. The lattice cuts the light 50%. Shelves and lattice are from Home Depot. You probably can't see the chicken wire that covers spaces that squirrels could get in.

Caveat - none of my orchids requires the highest light - no vandas, for example, so I don't know how this would work for your Southern exposure.

{{gwi:172485}}

You've got a good problem to solve. :)

Whitecat8

No squirrel problem here...too far from the mature woods behind us...
I have put out about 1/4 of the orchids I have, esp those that have recently finished blooming, and I'll do some comparisons later this year...They are on the north side in the shadow of my house...the only 'shade' I have...
I don't get LOTS of blooms inside, but I pretty much always have SOMETHINg in bloom and this is good enough for me...I'm never OVERWHELMED with too many...if there is such a thing..

We have trees planted, but they take SO LONG to grow, esp here where our growing season is only about 4 months long...
That's why I've come to love orchids so much....they will bloom any time of year inside, if given the right conditions / love...

whitecat,

I USED to have a squirrel PROBLEM. I purchased a HAV-A-HART trap sized for squirrels. After a couple of summers removing a few "offenders" from the neighborhood, I no longer have a problem.

I released 'em in a haven for squirrels--a local cemetery which is chock full of nut trees and borders a creek!

The bottom line is that the "bad" behavior is no longer viewed by all of the neighborhood rodents as acceptable. It doesn't hurt to have a terrier to let outside once in a while, either!!

--Stitz--

Mine go out after all danger of frost has past. Bright, indirect Sunlight. I feed half strength fertilizer (Miracle grow) every other watering or 2.

tommyr,

You and I are on the same page. I've been using Miracle Grow for tomatoes on my orchids for years during the summer months. It works fantastically for me! The way that I figure things, you can't have tomatoes without flowers, right?

I also use the following on my orchids: MSU formula, Peters 30-10-10 and GrowMore 20-10-20.

BTW, my tomato plants began setting fruits over a week ago. :-) Late for me, but I couldn't control the very cool and very wet spring.

--Stitz--

Saw my first tomato today, about an inch round. My corn (in an Earth box!) is 4 feet high at the moment.