OrchidTalk - Let's Talk Orchids!
Oct 11, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min · 10 segments
🌿🌿 I'm back! Let's catchup on all the growing (and mistakes) of the 2026 growing season in my own backyard! I talk about the Catasetum Sun burn of Spring 2026, the cultural requirements and unique…
[gentle music] Okay, so it's October today at the time of this recording.
Let's rewind the clock back about six month.
So it was springtime.
Catasetums are starting their season.
If you grow catasetums or love them, like myself, you know that spring is a really exciting but also dangerous time of year.
Exciting because the plants are waking up.
The new growth are starting to show.
You're anxious about the whole growth cycle beginning, thinking about when to water, when not to water, and hopefully set the plants up to a really strong start.
Also dangerous, 'cause these new growths are the most tender, the most vulnerable these catasetum tissues are for the year, and they're a bit of a ticking clock.
Catasetums only have one growing season to try to make the biggest, the most chunkiest, the most thick, fat bulb.
And everything that season depends on getting the culture right in the first few weeks, and hopefully get your plants off to a running start.
Well, this year I screwed it up.
I did not get it right.
This spring, my catasetum new growths got really badly sunburned.
Badly.
Not, oh, a little bleaching on the leaf edge, uh, maybe a little bit of a scar on the new growth.
No, no, no, no, no.
I mean, the brand-new leaved leaves came out all scorched.
All of them died.
I lost almost every single new growth out of at least 12 to 15 catasetums.
Even worse than that, big sections of the bulb got burnt.
The bulb from last year, yeah, the bulbed ones, they had scars.
They shriveled.
And then we got secondary infections on top of that once the sunburn sets in.
Goodness gracious, there was fungal infections and bacteria infections in these bulbs.
[gentle music] Okay, so it's October today at the time of this recording.
Let's rewind the clock back about six month.
So it was springtime.
Catasetums are starting their season.
If you grow catasetums or love them, like myself, you know that spring is a really exciting but also dangerous time of year.
Exciting because the plants are waking up.
The new growth are starting to show.
You're anxious about the whole growth cycle beginning, thinking about when to water, when not to water, and hopefully set the plants up to a really strong start.
Also dangerous, 'cause these new growths are the most tender, the most vulnerable these catasetum tissues are for the year, and they're a bit of a ticking clock.
Catasetums only have one growing season to try to make the biggest, the most chunkiest, the most thick, fat bulb.
And everything that season depends on getting the culture right in the first few weeks, and hopefully get your plants off to a running start.
Well, this year I screwed it up.
I did not get it right.
This spring, my catasetum new growths got really badly sunburned.
Badly.
Not, oh, a little bleaching on the leaf edge, uh, maybe a little bit of a scar on the new growth.
No, no, no, no, no.
I mean, the brand-new leaved leaves came out all scorched.
All of them died.
I lost almost every single new growth out of at least 12 to 15 catasetums.
Even worse than that, big sections of the bulb got burnt.
The bulb from last year, yeah, the bulbed ones, they had scars.
They shriveled.
And then we got secondary infections on top of that once the sunburn sets in.
Goodness gracious, there was fungal infections and bacteria infections in these bulbs.
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