Gotcha. That doesn't solve the problem of the seedlings being super sensitive though! And I don't know of any lab who would deflask.

no harm in asking, and I am sure $$$ go a long way.....:biggrin:
Actually if the project was much later I would go and "bag" the plants myself at the lab ( sterile ) and send them out.
There would be little difference between this approach and the lab sending out a replate flask, in terms of process - but everybody would end up with a manageable 3-5 plants.

Troy Meyers (on the list I posted before) actually prefer to send out seedlings in baggies rather than in flask: they say they travel better that way with no agar to get mixed up in. As long as the baggies are sterilish and airtight then it's still a controlled enviroment and they still need to be aclimatized on arrival.

Orchidsarefun: if your Encyclia would be deflaskable in the next couple of months then they might be a possibility. Just had a quick look and this side of the pond there's Encyclia flasks available: Equatorial Plants have calamaria, Claessen have vitellina, and Roelke have cordigera.

(I say a couple of months, because with the weather as it is in many areas some who can't get to a show are going to have to wait. On the other hand those with shows shouldn't have to miss the chance to get stuff in person... flasks are going to be at slightly different stages anyway, so I think this project we are likely to get a bit of a staggered start...)

Most of the European ones are mini flasks with 4-6 orchids, but I think they are a great concept myself! Means money to spend on more, different flasks!

The Encyclia pod is actually mine. I just sent it off to the lab last week, so I don't know how long they would take to get to that stage.

sorry!

I think that would probably be too long then for this one... oh well, simplifies things again!

So... are we going for this? Seems we are back to 'Phals in general'. I'm not sure how we go from that to making it official. But it would be nice if we could get it started as the RHS Orchid show starts in less than a week now!

What do people think?

Well I think we just call it. How about if we say that we will begin deflasking at the start of May, that gives everyone about a month to find a flask and let it acclimatise to their conditions.

I have already potted up my Phal tetraspis 'Olympic' x self that I got from Troys. We have a Phal expert grower here in our association and he says the Phals bloom really fast and actually can bloom in flask.

I'm looking for a few other flasks to try Phal species.

I don't think we can set a hard and fast time for deflasking once we start buying stuff. Eg one of the mini flasks I got last October showed signs of contamination a few days after I got it (I think it got a dent and some temperature changes while I was traveling around with it....), so I had to do an emergency de-flask. Some flasks might need a few months growing on too. I think saying aim to be deflasking during May would be good though.

I'm in for a small species phals. I kill small catts. Lol