Introducing myself and my Vanda :)

[Daemos]

Greetings to you all. My real name is Dimitri but everyone calls me Daemos so feel free to do so.

I am growing cactusses for more then a decade now but lately my interrest has shifted to growing vanda's as well. My friend had got me started by buying one in store and so I ordered mine about two months ago over the mail. If I have to believe the order company it is a vanda "blue magic" (the most common one available in the Netherlands known as the sansai blue). Unfortunatly the flower stem was broken during transport So I am still sitting here without any flowers. The vanda arrived here in terrible shape, plants was healthy but filled up to the neck with mites, beatles, catterpillars and also the very annoying and dangerous mealybugs. Fortunatly for me I am experienced with these pestlings and I "destroyed" them all by using deltamethrin in combination with Imidacloprid and permethrine systemic poison (moehahahah). The plant is now doing excellent but has very tiny black spots on the leafs (even the new one). I hope its not ringspot or something viral like that??!!
New roots have started to grow but the plant did drop the smallest lowest leaves (guess thats ok??)

It all started as an experiment (dangerously expensive one ) but I felt in love with this plant. The way the leaves grow, the roots and the flowering is just too amazing! I am planning on more vanda's but I first want to see if this one will work out (I never had one plant fail on me).

My conditions are really crappy, but I thought that if i can make cactusses bloom every year so can this vanda. The difference in climate is very large though hummidity 40-70% depending on the wind direction. Temperatures between september and march 12-16 C, March-August 25-35 C. Sunlight is even more horrid. september-februar maybe 12 hours of weak light. In summer between 6:00 and 11:00 very strong and direct light from then on good medium light till 22:00. Thats more of a desert climate if you ask me but I just got to try and make this work (could you imagine, tropical plants blooming amongst desert plants).
I water the vanda once a week by submerging the roots in a bucket filled with fertilized water. And every morning I spray the roots with demi-water. So far so good. It is still alive and growing and I am waiting for the sun and heat to come. I chose for sansai blue for the reason that it contains an awfull lot of v. coerullea and I know they can withstand extreme low temp.
The plan is now to wait for the sun to pop out in march and keep feeding the plant and moisting its roots by means of spraying. When the temp. goes nuts I will spray even more and water more and protect it from the sun in the morning. Can it take direct morning sunlight??

Too bad the flowerstem has been broken. Here comes a very important question form my side. Is this a real vanda "blue magic"?? The leafs look alot like princess mikassa to me. I love huge flowers (all cacti i own flower huge ) and the mikassa is just a little bit too small for my taste . I've been watching google foto's for days now and still can't make up my mind about which one I received. The orchid company I made the order only had blue magic and mikassa so it has to be one of the two. Anyone has pictures of a full plant (blue magic, sansai blue).

So far so good and I keep my fingers crossed. The winter is killing me and my plants. It is time the sun starts appearing.

O yeah almost forgot. Here are some foto's. Forgive me the crappy quality. Ill make some better foto's when I get my good camera back and when the sun starts coming out from behind those thick grey clouds!

Pictures from left to right: day after receival, month later, moved into a brighter spot.