SATURDAY 7/24/2010 UPDATE

BARBARA AND I ARE NOW OFFERING GUNG FU TEA INSTRUCTIONS AND DEMONSTRATIONS --- Barbara and I will come to your home or office with tea wares, water, and all our accessories to serve 4 different premium teas. This gung fu style tea involves small sized tea pots and will show you how enjoyable Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese tea can be while teaching you in your own environment. The demonstrations will take 2 - 3 hours and are limited to 6 people maximum in size for a one-on-one experience. For details, please see the popup photos on our Teas For Sale page.

PINE ROCKLAND COMPOSITION - a film by Jennifer Brown featuring Pine Ridge Sanctuary - 4/2010 --- This is a 30 minute film (m4v 212 MB file) made by Jennifer Brown as part of her MFA in Science And Natural History Filmmaking at Montana State University. It has taken Jennifer 2 years to produce this film all about the endangered Pine Rockland ecosystem and the way it interacts with residents and researchers in South Florida. The movie can be viewed using iTunes or QuickTime Player. This is a large file and may require some time to download on your computer depending upon the browser you use - Opera starts to run almost immediately, but IE requires some extra time. The film can also be viewed from the Pine Rockland Research page.

UNEXPLOITED PINE ROCKLANDS OF SOUTH ANDROS --- go to our Pine Rockland Habitat Research page to view this short video by John Lloyd and Gary Slater of the Ecostudies Institute. This unexploited Pine Rockland is probably the closest ecosystem to our Pine Ridge Sanctuary.

FASTER WEBSITE LOADING --- I have successfully moved the website to a much faster off-site web hosting company. The website, the photos, my research papers, and the Pine Rockland movie should load much faster now. . I would like to hear from you outthere how much faster the pages load. I am very interested. Thank You.

PHALAENOPSIS VIOLACEA & SAMERA ARE BLOOKING --- I have taken a photo of some of the violacea crosses made by HP Norton that are blooming right now. The plants on the left are violaceas that are the sought after blue/indigo color and the plants in the center along the back are Samera (= bellina X violacea) and those are all exhibiting a touch of blue to their coloration.

CATASETINAE ARE BLOOKING --- I have also taken a photo of some of the Catasetinae that are in bud and blooking right now. The Catasetum primary and complex grexes are the ones that are spiking which is normal --- they are the first ones in the season to bloom. These will be followed shortly by the Cycnoches hybrids and the last should be the Fredclarkeara hybrids.

PINE ROCKLAND WORKING GROUP WORKSHOP FOR PRIVATE LANDOWNERS ---

On Sat 5/8/2010, the Institute For Regional Conservation presented a day long Landowner's Workshop at Castello Hammock (22301 SW 162nd Avenue). Everything was discussed from "What Is A Pine Rockland" to "Identifying Characteristic Plants" to "Grant and Covenant Opportunities" (this one is by me) to hands-on practice of herbicide treatment for exotic plant pests. The Workshop was followed by a tour of the Avery Pine Rockland that IRC prescribed burned last June (Barbara & I we in the burn crew as spotters).

BARBARA IS BACK FROM CUBA -Dr. C. Marcos Pedro Ramos Rodríguez of the Centro de Estudios Forestales, Facultad de Forestal y Agronomía, Universidad de Pinar del Río is the Chairperson of the 2010 Simposio Internacional sobre Manejo Sostenible de los Recursos Forestales (SIMFOR2010). Barbara obtained permission from the State Department and received a Cuban Visa to attend the two week scientific Symposium on the closest ecosystem to our Pine Rockland (Pine Ridge Sanctuary). I will be posting photographs that she took during the Conference and the field trips she has gone on. should be interesting!

PRICE REDUCTIONS ---- Barbara and I have decided to continue our deepest discount WHOLESALE prices to ALL of our customers. You can open or download out pricelist from the link directly to the left ( Current Pricelist ). I have also added the Fdk. After Dark remake seedlings that are nicely established in 3.25" pots - now almost 2 years out of flask at $45.

PAPHIOPEDILUM HARD COVER PHOTO / RESEARCH BOOK ---- "Paphiopedilum In Taiwaniv" is a fabulous hardcover book with over 250 pages of full color photos of the newest Paph species and hybrids published in 2006. We have several copis for sale @ $45 not including postage. This is an excellent reference book or just a really nice picture book.

CATASETINAE - The Catasetinae are beginning to come out of dormancy and grow. The first plants coming into spike always seems to be the Catasetums. This should be followed all summer with the Catasetum hybrids followed by all the Cyc. type hybrids. One note --- when the Catasetinae START to come out of dormancy is the most critical time of year for watering. Allow the plants to produce their growths all on their own --- no watering or fertilizing until the growths start to show 4 or 5 new white roots coming from the small growths. At this time, give the plants light waterings for maybe 2 weeks as the growth expands and sends out their roots deeper into the pot. When you can see a little girth to the new growth and the tips of the new roots have buried themselves into the media, you can then start to water a little more thoroughly (probably once weekly depending upon your environment) and start fertilizing weakly (1/2 - 3/4 tsp per gal). Make sure you have good air circulation and that will insure that any water getting into the crown of the new growth dries out - that is the main reason for the new growth rotting). This is also a good time of year to repot for fresh media or for splitting the plants.

PHALAENOPSIS - The Phal blooming season is coming to a close as we get into the high 80s. It's summer time here already. I'm still checking local weather conditions when we ship up north in case we still require heat packs. We are actively selling cut flower spikes from the Phalaenopsis that are either too small to sell or from older plants that are fully open. My instructions to my employees are to cut the spikes half way down on the big strong plants and that will initiate secondary spiking which will be our summer blossoming season. This, just like the Catasetinae, is the primary time of year to repot your Phals for fresh media --- this will also allow you to check the condition of the root system and your watering schedule.

MULTI-FLORAL PAPHIOPEDILUM - The multi-floral Paphs are spiking and coming into flower. I've been growing Paphs for over 35 years now and I still do not know what initiates the flower spikes other than the plant maturing their growths. Multi-floral paphs in particular have to have one mature growth with a start to be blooming size.

TEA - I am now selling some of Barbara and my favorite teas along with delicious Green Tea nutritional bars and tea bags for cold tea. These teashave been some of our highly prized teas that we serve gung fu style when we have had special visitors. Please take a look.

PINE RIDGE SANCTUARY - our globally endangered Rock Pineland ecosytem was recently awarded Recertification as a Forest Stewardship. On 12/21/2008, Georgia Tasker of the Miami Herald newspaper ran a two page article ( p1 link and p2 link ) on us and I have included that in our website under the Pine Rockland section "Habitat Reasearch." Our Pine Ridge Sanctuary Pine Rockland was noted as the most aesthetically and scientificaly valuable pine flatwoods in the entire State of Florida. I have also previewed Jennifer Brown's doctoral movie that she is producing on the Pine Rocklands of South Florida in which we are featured. I will be adding both a shortened and the full length movie to my website as soon as the movie is complete. The movie will be presented at the upcoming Pine Rockland Working Group Conference 2/10/2010 - 2/13/2010 which will be held at Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Miami.

BLOG - Barbara and I have also started a Blog that will show photos and have short writeups on what we are currently doing at Pine Ridge Orchids -- ( PRO BLOG ). Recently, I have been too busy to post anything - please be patient because I have taken photos. I am posting new photos and writing new posts as time permits. I will be posting items like how I mix our media; how I repot the various orchids; R&R a couple of our irrigation pumps; and Barb will post photos on her work around the lily pond and in the Pine Rockland ecosystem. I was thinking of future postings like installing and finishing up the watering stations in our Rock Pineland to attract quail, foxes, snakes, raptors, and cougars to the water features in our arid ecosystem and the repairs to our "artificial tree" steel columns so that we can once again raise the stands for our bird houses and bat houses. I also have to repair the woodpecker damage to our bat houses and I will attempt to take photos of that procedure (as long as it works the way I am planning???).

For our foreign customers: as of 1/2009 I'm afraid I am limiting our exports. The Agricultural requirements for Export out of the US and Import into certain countries has become so prohibitive concerning regulations, permit requirements, and costs, along with credit card fraud that I am contemplating stopping all exports at this time.

We hope you enjoy all the hard work we have undergone to provide you with new photos, new information on our globally endangered ecosystem, and our section on teas that we enjoy. We welcome any feedback you can provide to us about what you think and how you can view the website pages.

Thank You very much --- Terry and Barbara Glancy