Babysitting

Our babies are being babysat over the winter. They went to the greenhouse this last week because it has gotten too cold to keep them outside. We rent partial bench space monthly and they do the care. We are excited to go and visit them this weekend so see how they liked their first week! We didn't bring them all because I don't think they would all fit. We kept the low light things like the Phals and Paphs at home and also the little tiny things. I hope they will do well there. I think they will be happier to be getting much better light. I really want the Dendrobium spectabile to flower this winter.

A couple of them seem to have gotten a fungus or something. We didn't water for about 3 weeks because it was chilly and had hoped that would stop the fungus, but no luck. The Mini cattleya bright angel ... red with yellow center has it. Whatever the fungus is it makes weird brown patterns on the backs of the leaves. The zygopetalum also has little spots that spread on the leaves then turn yellow and fall off. We have cut off all its leaves except the new growth. I'm especially worried about it. Sherry baby apparently has it too more than its usual spots. We got some copper fungicide to spray them with. Steven has sprayed the Sherry baby but not the others yet. I am crossing my fingers and hoping it works. Once they are cured- if they are cured- they can go to the greenhouse too. I will try and take some pictures.

Mystery solved- Liparis condylobulbon.



 





Our little mystery orchid started putting on a flowering spike probably about a month ago now. So of course I bloom booster it and here we are! We still had no idea what it was, so we brought it to the Orchid Society meeting to see if anyone there had a clue what it was. The suggestion was Liparis condylobulbon which I think is pretty spot on. It's officially not a mystery anymore. It's flowering away. Little white flowers- it's cute. It's still living at home with us. I couldn't get the camera to focus on the individual flowers close up.

 

 

New Babies!!! Dendrobium bracteosum and LC. Irene Finney

We, of course, had to go to the orchid auction that is the fundraiser for our Orchid Club. They sent out a list of plants that would be available ahead of time, and there were only a couple that we were really interested in. We have decided not to get more because we don't have the space or proper light, and we don't know yet what to do with them over the winter. But we couldn't resist these two for the price. We bid on a few others, but didn't want to pay too much money for them as we are on a very tight budget at the moment.

Dendrobium bracteosum is in a 4" plastic pot in bark. It's flowering now looking adorable. It has two new growths right now. We probably won't repot it until next year since there is still room in the pot. It's presently in quarantine to make sure it doesn't have any cooties. This is a dendrobium that wants what seems to be Oncidium light levels- in between Phal and cattleya. It wants to dry out between waterings, and it does not have a winter rest.

The cattleya isn't flowering, might be ready next year. The pictures they had of the flower though are really lovely- big and gaudy (I'm in a mood for that lately). It's planted in a 4" plastic pot also with a lot of nice roots on the new growth. Some of them are out of the pot, so we may try to repot it, but not sure yet. It's planted in rocks.

Catasetum is flowering!!

It's more opened up now. The flowers take a few days to fully open and become a little more upright. They also seem to be getting more golden yellow as time goes on. They are interesting with the speckles. The leaves are all gone now. We haven't been watering it at all anymore. I will probably mist it occasionally to keep the roots from dying. I wonder if there are other colors of these plants...

Ascocentrum ampullaceum

I just realized as I was trying to link to this post from the Updates post, that I never made a post about this plant! Oops! We got this at the Redland Orchid Festival last year in May 2012. It was flowering when we bought it. It was wired into a little maybe 3" clay pot with the roots just loose and hanging down. We sprayed it every morning, but the leaves started to shrivel pretty badly. Along with the other vanda, we started to spray it twice a day to see if it was just a moisture problem. The leaves plumped right back up. We decided to repot it into a 6" wooden basket and wrap the roots around inside the basket. We then put some large bark chunks, wine corks and a bit of moss in there to keep the humidity up more. Then it did just fine with once a day spraying. The plant has done pretty well. It started growing a lot more after I started using fertilizer water to spray it instead of plain water.

I started bloom boosting it in April because I knew it would flower in May. It did flower, but the spikes got sunburnt or too dried out at the tips and they didn't really elongate much. There were only a few flowers on each spike. That was pretty disappointing, but at least we knew we could make it happen. Next year we will try to cover the spikes a little or something maybe.

Lately the plant has been making roots, but the growing tips on them keep dying. We thought they might be getting too much sun, so we put a bit of loose coconut husk over them to provide a little shade. The coconut husk doesn't really retain much moisture, so I'm not worried about it staying too wet. We are keeping both the vandas outside the porch now because they get the best light there. Even if it rains on them a lot I'm not very concerned about the roots staying too wet and rotting because there's so little medium. If it rains for many days in a row we can always bring them on the porch.

Apparently we never took a picture of it either! The flowers are pink, and the leaves are supposed to get dark purple sun freckles. It is getting more of them now that it is in more sun again.

We're Slowing Down

It seems like the plants are overall slowing down for the winter. They seem to be finishing developing their existing new growths, and only a few appear to be planning any more new growths. Last winter some kept growing over the winter, but most didn't. I was a little disappointed with the amount of growth we had this year, but I decided to blame that on the double move. They didn't get the light or water or fertilizer they needed consistently because of the moving. Oh well, there's always next year.

I'm a little sad because I don't know if cattleya cernua will flower this year. Last year it flowered in September, and there are no signs of flowering- only growing. Maybe the new growths it's making now will make flowers, and it is just behind this year. I'm crossing my fingers.

It's a little sad to see them go into winter mode when I wish they had grown more this growing season. We still don't know what we will do with them over the winter. We have them on a screen porch right now that will be okay for another month or two, but not longer than that. There's very little room for them inside the house, except for a few lower light ones. There's a greenhouse place that grows and sells orchids in this area that also rents bench space in their greenhouse. We are considering doing that because it's not too expensive. We are really worried about cooties though. Greenhouses always seem to have bugs and fungus etc. that none of very few of our plants have had a problem with in the past. I don't want to get into having to treat them regularly if I don't have to.

Updates

One of the Fred orchids Oncidium Gold Medal is flowering. It's not a big flowering spike, but the plant is small so we are excited anyways. It didn't flower last year due to sadness. We got it right this time!

 

The Gus Orchid/Laelia has opened two flowers.  It has another definite flowering spike growing and a couple of sheaths that I'm hoping will turn into flowering spikes. I have been bloom boosting this thing like nobody's business to get lots of flowers. I have been spraying its leaves with bloom booster nearly everyday and watering it with bloom booster. I'm going to try experimenting with putting it outside in more sun for a couple of hours a few days per week/when I think of it.

 

 

 

Catasetum is about to bust out. Tomorrow is the orchid club meeting where you can bring your plants to show them off. I'm pretty sure this will probably open a couple days late and be done my next months meeting. Oh well. Timing is a bitch.  I know it looks funny with only one leaf. We are in the process of drying it out since it now has pretty much lost all the leaves. There's no reason to water it really when there's no transpiration going on. From now until spring when it starts making new growths again we will only keep it damp enough for the roots not to dry out and die. We are super excited to see what this will look like!!

 

 

The vandas are getting more sun now, and the Ascocentrum ampullaceum has been getting its sun freckles back. That's what I was aiming for. Then I know it's getting enough light to be happy. Both the vandas are growing new roots. The orange one is making really honker thick roots. We put little scraps of the coconut husk stuff we use to line the baskets when we pot in the vanda baskets to protect the roots from the sun. The root tips kept dying, especially on ampullaceum. I hope this will give the roots enough protection to get going.

 

Dendrobium spectabile is sunburnt again. I tried to put it outside to get more sun, but the only place to put it gets strong afternoon sun. It was too much for it, and we had to cut off a few leaves again. I am trying to put it in stronger sun for only a little while at a time now to get it used to it. Then it will probably be fine where we had it. We were told it wants vanda light levels, but it can't handle that right now. I'm trying to sun it more because it flowers in winter. I'm trying to make sure it's prepped and ready. Once its new growths are mature I will start bloom boosting I think.  

 

Brassia Rex finally kicked the bucket completely. We were down to just 2 pseudobulbs and a tiny new growth in a 2" rehab pot. Then those pseudobulbs got the squishy rot, and we decided to just throw it away. We will have to get a different one some other time. We maybe should have just treated it with some kind of fungicide, but we've really never had any plants with disease like that. Next time we will know. It's kind of annoying to be sold sick plants.