Our June speaker is Ken Russ, who together with his lovely wife Judy, have been growing orchids for more than 20 years and have become multiple AOS award winners. After so manyyears of growing orchids Ken and Judy realized there was a need to share their orchid growing knowledge with all level orchid growers so they decided to create some innovative and practical presentations specially geared to help Florida orchid society members perfect the art of orchid growing
Jim & Melana Davison: “Dendrobiums – Soft Cane, Hard Cane, Australian, Pendulous – Which is which?”
Jim and Melana Davison are AOS Accredited Judges. They have an extensive and diverse orchid collection that seems to be continuously growing. Not only involved in caring for their orchids, they are actively involved in several South Florida orchid societies. Melana is the current President of both the Orchid Society of Coral Gables and the South Dade Amateur Orchid Club. Jim is the past President of the Orchid Society of Coral Gables and the East Everglades Orchid Society.
Mac Rivenbark,“An Introduction to Philippine Orchids.”
Mac and his Filipina wife started an orchid business over 12 years ago after many fascinating trips to the Philippines. With extensive study, Mac is becoming an expert in Philippine as well as other Asian species and currently grows and blooms over 300 different types.
Larry Cox will present our March program. Larry’s lecture is entitled
“Lycastes for South Florida.”
Larry Cox acquired his first orchid, a cattleya, over 40 years ago. His second orchid was a paphiopedilum. He has grown cattleyas, dendrobiums, phalaenopsis, oncidiums, vandas, and less popular genera; but paphs eventually became his favorite orchids and the heart of his collection. In 1989, he moved to the Redlands area of south Miami-Dade County where he built his dream orchid house of 3000 square feet and continued to increase his collection with emphasis on multifloral paphs. Larry enjoys showing his orchids and has earned forty-six awards, including five FCC’s, from the American Orchid Society.
Continue reading SFOS March 18th Meeting: Larry Cox “Lycastes for South Florida”
Sheldon Takasaki, the owner of Carmela Orchids in Hawaii, will present our January program. His program is titled “Everything you wanted to know about Hawaiian Orchids and some other secrets”. If you have never heard Sheldon speak you are in for a treat!!
Continue reading January 21st Meeting: Sheldon Takasaki of Carmela Orchids, Hawaii
Our November program will be presented by Jim Watts. Jim will present a program titled “Leafless Orchids, fascination and frustration!” This program is a review of the various leafless genera and their species, discussing the habitat and growth habit of these fascinating orchids
Jim started growing orchids in 1994 in Tallahassee with 6 equitants and a phalaenopsis. When he moved to Miami for University of Miami in 1996 he thought he was in heaven! As he expanded his collection, his two main areas of interest became Tolumnia and the leafless orchids. He pestered the AOS editors to feature an article on leafless orchids in the Orchids magazine for almost two years. He was doing a lot of research on his own, and was hoping for more information. Finally in frustration, the AOS editors told him to write one himself if he really wanted to see it. So, in March 2003 issue of Orchids, his article was published. He had a reprint for society newsletters from around the globe, including the Canary Islands, Canada, and all over the United States. Jim is an Accredited AOS Judge, having joined the program at the Florida Caribbean Judging Center. He now lives in Hollywood, FL.
The plant raffle table will be a selection of phals and paphs that were donated to SFOS from Pine Ridge Orchids. Dan & Margie Orchids will supply the blooming plants for our special raffles.
We hope you will join us for this interesting and informative program.
Guillermo Salazar
Program Chairman
Reminder: Any plants you wish to have considered for judging must be entered no later than 7:30PM. This allows our judges ample time to properly evaluate your orchids and, if necessary, present them for award photography before the main program begins.
Paul Phelps of Phelps Farm Orchids, Inc. will present our October program. The program titled “Cattleyas, The Queen of Orchids” is a hands on presentation that will talk about culture, potting and repotting, fertilizer needs and other growing tips specific to growing the Cattleya alliance.
Phelps Farm Orchids Inc. is a commercial Orchid farm located on five acres in North West Hillsborough County about 15 minutes north of the Tampa International Airport. The business was started in 1986 by Paul and Patricia Phelps and grew out of Patricia’s love of orchid collecting, into a thriving commercial operation. At the time the business was started, the growing area was 3500 square feet of Quonset greenhouse. In 1992 the greenhouse was doubled to 7000 square feet. In 2012 a 1600 square foot greenhouse was built to house hanging and mounted Orchids that require daily watering.
Cattleyas are the specialty of the house but other genera are grown there as well. A breeding program was started in the late ‘80’s with the main focus on the Cattleya alliance. At present Paul has made over 800 hybrids.
A web site was brought on line in 1994 featuring an on line catalog. You can visit this site at www.phelpsfarm.com. This web site is currently undergoing a renovation including a shopping cart for online ordering and a link to articles about Orchid culture and other relative information. Locally Phelps Farm Orchids was featured on NBC’s Daytime show with Cyndi Edwards and nationally they were featured on the PBS series Americas Heartland. If you would like to see the episode on the web, go to www.americasheartland.org, Click on Stories, choose Season 5 and click on Episode 503 and then select the story called Petal Pushers.
Phelps Farm Orchids, Inc. will be providing the plant raffle table as well as bringing plants for sale. Many of the plants Paul & Patricia are bringing were produced at their nursery from their breeding program.