Helge W.'s posts

Tanya LamIt is a pleasure to welcome to our society for the first time Tanya Lam. Tanya hails from San Jose, CA, where she has been growing orchids since 1997. Tanya will be speaking on ‘ Helping your Orchids Thrive in Challenging Environments’.  Since Tanya leads a very busy life juggling a full time job, frequently traveling for business, taking care of her family as well as her large orchid collection, she has had to develop successful conditions to grow her orchids to accommodate her life style and minimized the loss of plants during her travels.

After seeing orchids growing in their habitats in Thailand, Brazil, Ecuador and China, Tanya was determined to improve her growing conditions to overcome her environmental challenges. This required her to develop orchid mixes that would stay moist for 7-14 days and she also worked to also improve her greenhouse operations.   Tanya’s current collection is now improving with her successes, and she continues to try growing many species that she avoided before.  During her talk, Tanya will share everything she does to make her collection thrive in San Jose, including how she waters, heats, cools and fertilizes her orchids. She also will provide the plant table this month. 

Tanya is being co-sponsored by POS and SDCOS so she will be speaking to SDCOS on Tuesday evening about ‘The Long Lasting and Frequently Blooming Orchid Species’.  For those interested in attending her talk, please refer to the SDCOS website.   Read more »

Debby HallidayWe are pleased to welcome back Debby Halliday as our July speaker. In her talk titled "All About Phalaenopsis", Debby will be talking about Phalaenopsis and how to be successful in growing and reblooming them.  She will also give a repotting demonstration.  These days Phals are often a person’s first orchid and, if they can grow and rebloom them, they will always enjoy orchids.  Debby will focus on discussing how and where these beauties grow naturally so that people gain an understanding of the plant’s needs rather than just trying to memorize a list of Do’s and Don’t’s.  This lecture is geared to newer orchid growers, but hopefully everyone will find some useful tidbits they didn’t know before. 

Debby is the 1st Vice President of the San Diego County Orchid Society and has spoken at all of their recent shows and for several plant societies in the region. She has served as a ribbon judge at the SDCOS shows for the last 4 years and currently leads her judging teams.  Debby enjoys helping people learn to be successful with orchids. She is an excellent orchid grower and has won many awards at SDCOS shows. She has a diverse background in growing orchids and plants in general. The following summarizes her background in her own words:   Read more »

With the influx of new members and the onset of the spring and summer growing season, our April meeting will be devoted to select aspects of orchid culture as well as addressing specific questions meeting attendees may have for the expert panel.  This program is an exciting opportunity for both new and long-term POS members to learn about or become re-acquainted with the fundamentals of orchid culture presented by our own panel of advanced POS hobbyists, who have many years of experience in growing a variety of orchid genera. The expert panel consists of Merle Robboy (watering and fertilizing), Jerry Spencer (orchid pests and diseases), and Alex Nadzan (growing mixes and repotting).  Each panelist will share their experiences (10-15 min. each) on three major aspects of orchid culture, then address questions members and guests may have on any topic of orchid culture. Members are encouraged to submit questions in advance to twisniewski1@cox.net or just raise them at the meeting.   Read more »

Andrew CameronOur society is happy to welcome Andy Cameron, Ph.D., from California Institute of Technology.  Andy will be speaking to us on the importance of genes and chromosomes in orchids. The title of his talk is "Steamy Stories:  How Genes and Chromosomes Do Their Dance." In the present era of genomics, concepts involving DNA, genes and chromosomes are offered to explain many of the everyday processes that we, as orchidists, find fascinating. How do genes affect the shape and colors of orchid flowers? What can the number of chromosomes tell us about our favorite cymbidium hybrids? The relevance of these questions to our understanding of the growth and hybridization of cymbidiums emerges from stories about the way the genetic material behaves during plant growth and form.  His talk will take place in the Lake San Marcos conference center which is located near the pavilion.

Andy is a semi-retired member of the research faculty at the California Institute of Technology. He studies how the  genomes of marine creatures like sea urchins and sea stars dictate the form of these animals. He is past president of the San Gabriel Valley Branch of the Cymbidium Society of America and an Associate Judge for the CSA. He writes the Duffer's Corner column for the CSA Journal. He also tries to convince cymbidiums and other cool-growing orchids that Pasadena is a good place to live. One of his major goals is to introduce orchid hobbyists to the wonderful body of biological information that underlies their pursuits.   Read more »

Arnold GumIt is a pleasure to welcome back Arnold Gum to our society.  Arnold will present a travel log on his trips to Taiwan, as a guest of the Taiwanese government, to judge the Taiwanese International Orchid Show.  Arnold also spent some time exploring Taiwan including looking at some of their wild orchids, visiting orchid nurseries, and having wonderful meals with the Mayor of Tainan (in the South of Taiwan) and the President of Taiwan, visiting amazing temples, the national museum, the pottery museum, and of course, shopping.  Arnold will review the highlights of his trips to this orchid rich part of the world. It is a presentation not to be missed.

Arnold Gum is a patent attorney by profession, working locally at Qualcomm. He has been growing orchids for over 45 years and spent his youth with some of Hawaii's greatest orchid pioneers including Ben Kodama, Tadao Kazumura, Isamu Ota, Richard Takafuji, Richard Takase, and Goodale Moir.  Arnold has been an American Orchid Society Judge for around 25 years and has been a member of various orchid societies along the way.  He has won over 85 AOS awards and grows all sorts of orchids including cattleyas, phalaenopsis, papiopedilums, including lots of rare and amazing plants. Over the years, Arnold has amassed a collection of several thousand plants. Like many of us, Arnold also grows other types of plants, including epiphyllum cacti, aloes, plumerias, and fruit trees.