Joint Meeting with EAOS                                 

Location: Venice Community Center (doors open at 6:30pm)
Speaker: Jim Roberts,                  Florida SunCoast Orchids
Topic: What’s A Good Orchid to Grow

Jim has been growing orchids for over 25 years in climates ranging from cold Minnesota to hot SW Florida. In 2001, he and wife Mary moved to Florida with a small collection of plants and the dream of operating an orchid nursery became a reality. They currently grow their beauties in three gutter connected greenhouses encompassing 10,000 square feet of growing space. As always, he strives to grow and sell the best quality orchid plants and to build a lasting reputation in the industry as one of the very best.
Jim will have orchids for sale at the meeting.

Held at the Christ Lutheran Church, 701 N. Indiana Avenue, Englewood, Florida.

Topic: Growing & Showing Specimen Plants 

Bill Thoms has been growing and showing orchids for more than 45 years in the central Florida area. He has more awards for Culture in just Bulbophyllums than anyone else in the world (47 so far) The American Orchid Society has added a new Annual Award for the Bulbophyllums, the Bill Thoms Award.
Bill gives talks on a wide range of topics ranging from his specialty, “Bulbophyllums”, to General Orchid Culture. They all are presented in a funny style that helps growers understand how the plants work and the Culture of Orchids. He helps the beginner grower with advice about fixing problems and has a wealth of accumulated information for the more advanced grower.
Bill will give you tips to make your orchids grow and bloom better.
Some say he is the best speaker they have ever heard. Come and see for yourself.

Speaker: Mark Reinke,  –  Marble Branch Farms

Topic: Decoding Dendrobiums: The Suprising Orchids You Thought You Knew!

Why would anyone familiar with orchids be surprised by the genus Dendrobium? Perhaps because the Dendrobium plants most commonly seen for sale are not necessarily what does well under cultivation in our temperate latitudes, but what is easy and inexpensive to mass produce in outdoor orchid ranges at low elevation in Thailand and Indonesia. Yet, these showy plants that often prove difficult to rebloom in our collections represent only a tiny sampling of this widespread and diverse genus that comes from many different climate types, and from sea level to more than ten thousand feet above.

Mark’s program offers a comprehensive introduction to the genus, clarifying some of the native climates and cultural needs of the sections you may already have basic familiarity with, and introducing you to some that are only now becoming more available commercially. Hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised by how many of these new introductions would do well alongside your Phalaenopsis or Cattleya orchids, offering long lasting, colorful blooms without the need for high heat, high light, or annual starving or chilling.

Mark Reinke, and his partner Gary Collier, left Atlanta city life behind more than a decade ago and now own and operate a small commercial orchid nursery in a remote part of the extreme western tip of South Carolina called Marble Branch Farms, where they are propagating their own new and unusual hybrids in the Cattleya alliance and other genera as well. Mark began growing orchids at the age of 12 when his family lived in the St. Petersburg, FL area. He has been a life-long horticulturalist and orchid grower and is active in both the Atlanta Orchid Society and the Western North Carolina Orchid Society. He has served in many capacities for the Atlanta society over the years including being president twice, and continues to write plant descriptions and cultural information for their newsletter. Mark will have plants for sale at the meeting, including some of the more recently available Dendrobium species and hybrids Mark will be talking about in his program.

Venice Community Center.
Meeting starts 7:00 – Doors open at 6:30pm