The Orchid Grower

Madison Orchid Growers’ Guild

Carol Stiff is originally from Kenosha Wisconsin and got her B.S. in bacteriology from U.W.-Madison. She also holds a M.S in plant science, a Ph.D. in forest science and an M.Ed. in education technology. Most of Carol's career has been university research and teaching at various schools. She started Kitchen Culture Kits, Inc. in 1998 and advises on the internet, sells kits for home tissue culture and teaches workshops around the country. Carol started culturing orchids a few years ago as a favor to a friend and at one time had a whole "guest room" full of plants. These were unfortunately lost when hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Louisiana greenhouses they were growing in. Carol recently returned to Wisconsin and lives with her family in Milton.

Plant tissue culture is a method of plant propagation that involves growing plant parts in a sterile environment and controlling the production of roots or shoots with growth regulators. Using this method, small plant parts can be induced to produce hundreds of small "plantlets" which can be further developed and grown to maturity in greenhouses or as houseplants. The kitchen culture approach uses inexpensive household supplies and user-friendly procedures to mass produce your favorite plants. An overview of what tissue culture is and how it can be done at home will be presented with a focus on orchid seed culture and orchid "plant parts" culture.

Spring is in the air which means our Annual Spring Sale at Olbrich is just around the corner. Please save Saturday April 7th on your calendar for this special day. 10% of our proceeds go back to Olbrich. If you were not at our last OGG meeting, there is still time to sign up to help. If you can help either on Friday morning to unload the truck from Ackers and assemble the display or if you can work either the morning shift (9:30 AM – noon) or afternoon shift (noon – 2 PM) please call Denise Baylis (798-3602) or Judy Stevenson (231-3163) after 4/4.

We discussed several things at the last Board Meeting. First, we are not renting a bus for the MAOC Show in Chicago because there was not enough interest. Six people did sign up. Don Fago looked into renting a van but obtaining insurance for the van was a complication. We will pass around a sheet at the April 22nd OGG meeting if people would like to be part of a car pool.

We have requested a 50 square foot display at the MAOC, so it is very important that you send plants to that show. Most likely it will take two vehicles to take down and pick up the orchids on Sunday. We still need volunteers. Please call Sandy Delamater (835-8118). Remember to send plants that are free of insects. At the last OGG Board meeting we decided that if there is a plant with insects submitted, that plant will be removed from the exhibit. Thanks for your co-operation.

Steve Thimling saw an unusual orchid at Orchid Quest. The owners, Anita Martin and Russ Vernon of New Vision Orchids describe it for us: The "tie-dye" orchid is Doritaenopsis (Golden Sun x Brother Red Splendor) x (Taida Pearl x Kung's Valentine). If the original hybridizer registers the plant it could have a shorter name but for now it is known by its grandparents! Attached is a picture of the sibling group. We are excited that there is so much interest in this cross and hopefully some of them receive awards in the future.

Doritaenopsis (Golden Sun x Brother Red Splendor) x (Taida Pearl x Kung’s Valentine)

I am from St. Petersburg, Russia. I came to United States six years ago with my husband who is a physicist at UW. My first orchid, a no-name white phalaenopsis, came as a gift for Valentine’s Day in 2004. I believe this is what many orchid growers begin with. Already in a few months, by the time our family moved to Madison, I had about 15 orchids.

I knew the orchids are going to be my passion and one of the first things I did after moving to the new place I joined The Orchid Growers’ Guild. The first meeting I attended was at Acker’s, the place that began to contribute to my orchid collection this very first day. By now I have about 60 orchids, some of them I bought at orchid shows and orchid farms. Others I adopted from other growers and even one abandoned on the street. I found two of my phals on Harvard Yard in Cambridge (student housing). I received third place at OQ 2007 for one of them!

Orchids interest me because there is such a great diversity of genera, color, shapes, etc. They grow in so many different media, some unusual. As of today I did not make my mind up yet of what is my favorite orchid genus but I am most attracted to miniatures.

I keep some of my orchids in a large fish tank that I have turned into an orchidarium. I have a fan and lights on a timer. I like to conduct small research projects with some of my orchids and the unusual media they can grow in provides me with more ways to experiment. I try growing them in different media and then evaluate the plant after a few months, to determine if it has produced new roots for example. Some media are the usual: bark-based, sphagnum but also different mounts, cork, clay pots, using sphagnum in different ways. I also used LECA (Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate) - media for semi-hydroponic culture, but I did not have big success. I am toying with the possibility of trying a mount on a clay slab.

A few years ago I got AceHTML, a free program for building websites. I have been playing with it for about four years and use it for editing and AceFTP for publishing. This program is available on-line which is where I find most of my information about orchids.

Photographs by Rich Narf