New House, Grow Conditions and Culture Checkup for Current Culture

[alecStewart1]

Hello, friends!

So my fiance and I finally moved to our new rental home and I got all of the plants moved.

I wanted to run some things by y'all about the current growing conditions. My birthday is coming up, and I would love to get another Neo (probably not a >$200 one) to get my culture up to 4 orchids.

The house we're now in is noticeably dry. The humidity meter I had at one point said 27-32% RH when I was moving stuff in, so I've had to slightly change a few things. I'm bringing in a humidifier to help up the humidity in some places for now, until I can get a larger one that could get most of the house.

Currently our house doesn't have heat available (one things in a list of several that we didn't learn until moving in), but highs for the days down here right now is 70-80 degree Fahrenheit during the day and around 66-68.

The Phal I have is in the primary bath by the tub, in a windowsill that gets filtered light and there's also a sun roof, so the bathroom gets nice natural lighting that's not super bright.

The grow cabinet is in our study, which is leads out to the backyard so there's a difference in temps from the rest of the house.

For both the Leptotes and my Neo Nishidemiyako they're both in the grow cabinet with all the carnivorous plants. The Leptotes is on the top most cabinet where it's around 70-75% RH during the day and gets bright light. The Neo is on the bottom of the cabinet where it's gets lower light and is 75-85% RH during the day.

Night time temps and humidity in the grow cabinet are around 62 degrees Fahrenheit and 95% RH. The cabinet gets good airflow with the help of the computer fans I got, however because of the dry house I have to turn the fans down some to get the high night time humidity that some of my highland Nepenthes like.

The only notable thing that's happened so far is that I put the Nishidemiyako in too strong of light for a couple of days and let it get too dry between waterings so two bottom leaves popped off when I bumped them when inspecting the plant. They came off really cleanly, strangely but fortunately enough. The other leaves are still nice and green with the nice striping, and the keiki/chiba is still chugging along, slowly growing out leaves. Nothing else about the plant looks different or abnormal. Tsuke is the same color and the roots are still looking good but obviously not much noticeable growth since it's the cool season.

We have several windows that get good light, however the main issue with moving some plants to windowsills is just the overall dryness of the house.