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Francois and Sandy Mellett

Francois and Sandy live in the town of Kleinmond which is a little coastal village within spitting distance of Betty's Bay.  It is about an hours drive from Cape Town if you aren't fighting with commuter traffic.  They are very close to the ocean and don't have to worry much about higher inland temperatures.  While they haven't been growing Disas for a long time, they aren't afraid to try new things.  Without much in the way of encouragement besides reading Louis Vogelpoel's pamphlet on "Disa uniflora", Francois decided to try raising Disas from seed.  This isn't something new but not a lot of people have tried and been successful with this method.  I'm not talking about raising them in sterile flaks on artificial media but sowing the dry seed on boiled peat or coco peat and getting them to grow that way.  Following the photos of his small shade and lath house setup, I have some pictures of his sowing on peat and coco peat.  I don't have anything current but the total timeframe for the plantlets is about 4 months with the latest picture from mid April, according to Francois who has sent me some of his digital photos.

Here Francois and Sandy are standing behind some of their plants.  Notice that there has been some breeding going on as evidenced by the tags.
Behind them is their lath house and just beyond the house in the background is the ocean.
The shot to the top right shows the food tray that Francois is using to raise his seedlings.

The inside of the lath house is filled with Disas as shown to the right.

 
The arrangement of lath and shade house is evident here.

Some of the summer blooming surround this caption.  I didn't make a note of the crosses.
Some of the early attempts at seed sowing surround this caption. He has just sown the seed on Boiled peat and watered from below while maintaining a high humidity.  Anyone can do it!
The photos above were all taken in Mid January.  You can see some plants starting but they are tiny.
The photos from here to the bottom of the page have all been supplied by Francois or Sandy.  Hopefully he will send more as the plants get bigger.
This is his newest attempt at sowing and transplanting seedlings.  He is using palm peat over crushed stone.  It shows that the little buggers will grow on most anything.

The tray above and to the right were photographed in early March.
See how much larger the plants are than in January.

This shows the latest method.

Quick, how many plants?

Here are the latest shots of the circular trays.  These photos were supposedly taken in Mid April.  That's pretty impressive!