OSMT Meeting, Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Time: 7:00 pm (refreshments at 6:30 pm)
Location: Cheekwood Botanical Gardens

Speaker: Geraldine A. Powell of The Orchid Gallery

“Bigger Is Better”

Geraldine Powell, co-owner of The Orchid Gallery in Chattanooga, TN, has been growing orchids for more than 30 years and her plants have won numerous AOS awards.

Her talk, often humorous and accompanied by a Power Point slide show, focuses not just on specimen plants but also on how your orchids will grow and  bloom much better if the plants are bigger.  She’ll talk about containers, potting mixes and about how to deal with some of the problems large plants present.

Powell, an expert in growing orchids and developer of the Cool Pot™ for masdevallias, miltoniopsis and various pleurothallids, is available. Pre-orders are welcome until Sept 9th. Be sure to visit their new online store.

About Geraldine Powell

My first orchid was a Cattleya. I bought it because it smelled wonderful. The rest is history. My interests have changed over the years from Catts. to Paphs. and Phrags. to weird species and so on. I have always liked Masdevallias and Miltoniopsis but hesitated to try many of them because of their reputation for being cool growing. I grew a few of the warmer growing types but I really wanted coccinea and yungasensis and the like.

When we opened our nursery in Brooksville, Florida I set up a small greenhouse specifically for cool growers. My partner thought I was nuts. I guess she was right, but our cooler growing plants started receiving AOS awards. When we moved to Signal Mountain in Tennessee I continued with the cool growers. It might be a little cooler on the side of the mountain but I still had problems with the coolest growers. Over the first 2 years in Tennessee I developed Cool Pots. These have allowed us to grow a much wider variety Masdevallias. They work great for Miltoniopsis, Phrags., and quite a few other orchids that like it cool and damp. We began marketing Cool Pots about four years ago. Over the years I have learned a lot about growing Miltoniopsis, Masdevallias and other cool growing orchids in a warm climate.

But even if we I have specialized in cool growers they are not the only things we grow. Paphs., Phrags. Catts., Oncidiums and so on. For the last five or six years we have growing more and more specimen size plants of various genera.

I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve learned with your society.