FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

[evenwind]

I was a grower of orchids long before I discovered CPs. (In fact, my first CPs were a couple of Pings to overcome a fungus gnat infestation in my orchids.) Naturally, the orchids I most wanted to grow were Masdevallias and Masdevallias require more humidity than I can give them in the winter. Over the years I'd tried various things to increase the humidity levels but the solutions were either high maintenance or basically didn't work. Humidity trays in particular were a big disappointment - I've seen experimental findings that show that the increased humidity from the tray dissipates rapidly and is gone an inch or two from the tray's surface, nowhere near the height of a pot. For reasons unknown, last fall I decided to try again and bought a couple of Masdevallias. (About now you're wondering why I didn't post this in the orchid forum, right? I'm getting there.) Midway through the winter, when I was seeing the typical problems of too low humidity (jammed leaves), I had an idea. I cut the middles out of 2-liter plastic Coke bottles and put the resulting cylinders around the pots. The results were amazing. Not only did the new leaves grow normally, the plants actually flowered! I have no way of measuring the actual increase in humidity delivered to the plants - it's probably not all that much - but it was enough for my cloud forest Masdevallias. Anyhow, I'm posting this here because it's possible these "humidity tubes" might be a perfect intermediary step between a CP seedling-in-baggie and a CP seedling ready for its final growing conditions.

For what it's worth.