Venice Community Center
(doors open at 6:30pm)
Speaker: Jeff Higel
Topic: Growing Better Orchids

Jeff has been fascinated with orchids for over 30 years, growing them commercially for nearly 20. He has served as President and Show Chair for the Venice Area Orchid Society. Jeff has a penchant for learning things the hard way, and would like to share some, or even most of, his hard- learned knowledge with you.
This program will discuss what he does, and why, to successfully cultivate these fascinating and sometimes frustrating plants. He will try to make it profitable for the novice as well as the most experienced grower.
Jeff will have a nice variety of plants for sale. These plants are grown locally under conditions that are easily duplicated.

Jeff’s greenhouse is located at Honey Bee Nursery, 2383 Englewood Rd. (Rt. 776) in Englewood (941-474-6866)

Joint EAOS/VAOS Meeting in Englewood                                                                    

July 10th (Monday)

Speaker:  Louis Del Favero,

Louis Del Favero Orchids, Tampa

Topic: “Growing Species”

Louis Del Favero received a V. Rothchildiana from a family friend for his 12th birthday. In 1968 he began working for Jungle Orchids after school, weekends and summers. They imported tree fern and orchids from Guatemala. A year later he established Louis Del Favero Orchids in Miami. It was also during this time that he took a collecting trip with Fred Fuchs to British Honduras (now Belize) and Honduras. After that trip, Louis was consumed by a desire to view orchids in their native habitat. This started 20 years of traveling to Mexico, Central, South America and the Caribbean. In 1981 Louis moved to his current location in rural Tampa where he used his extensive contacts to continue importing specie orchids from their native countries. He and his wife Bonnie have more than 13,000 s.f. of greenhouses open to the public of which approximately 50% are warm tolerant species, and the other half is comprised largely of Encyclias, Dendrobiums, Oncidiums, and compact to large flowered Cattleyas with an emphasis on fragrant orchids.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Speaker: Mark Reinke

Topic: Decoding Dendrobium:  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