Gus Orchid flowers have arrived

The Gus Orchid (Laelia Amoena coerulea x Laelia Nina Bonita "Barbara") has opened up two of it's sets of flowers. It is still working on a couple of more spikes/buds.  It has never flowered this well before. It was always a struggle to get it to make one or two flowers. I wish I knew what did the trick. Was it the greenhouse and extra light over the winter? Was it the higher nitrogen fertilizer I used for a month or so during May and early June? Was it the Superthrive I mixed in with that fertilizer? Is it the more frequent water? Is it just that the plant is larger? I have no idea, but it is apparently happy. I hope it will still be looking good for the meeting in a couple of weeks.

Anticipation of Flowers

We have several more plants we are waiting to open their flowers.

The big Gus Orchid is in bud all of a sudden. That sort of came out of nowhere. I hadn't even been bloom boosting it! That plant is fussy I've decided. The same exact plant at the orchid trail has way bigger pseudobulbs and is just much more robust. Ours is a good vegetative grower, but it's hard to get it to flower usually. I've decided that a lot of our plants- especially the cattleyas and anything else that wants to dry out has been getting too dry. We are watering more often now especially with the greenhouse so hot.

The Ondicium Gower Ramsey has a huge flowering spike that is at least 2ft tall and really strong! The buds are only just starting to form, so we have a little while on that one yet.


The Miltassia Shelob Tolkein is also budding still. They are growing bigger. We've been watering it more so the buds don't blast. That happened last year and we only got a couple of flowers.

One of the mystery Phals is about to pop open! It looks like it will be pink or purple. We will see in a couple of days and I will add more pictures.

Encyclia tampensis

Encyclia tampensis is flowering right now. It has 3 flower spikes! I think one of the spikes is even from one of the original plant parts that was so puny. There's only one bud on that spike. We brought it to the Orchid Society meeting yesterday and it didn't win any prizes but it looked cute. We were warned not to water it too much, but I think it has actually started looking better since we started watering it more. It doesn't have much medium in it's pot and it dries out fast. We are still letting it dry out between waterings, so I think it is safe. At least I hope so....

Phragmipediums

We have been watering all three of the phrags everyday because they like to have a lot of water, and it's hot in the greenhouse. 

The phrag bessae hybrid is also still sitting in it's water dish. I wrote last month that the leaf tips were browning, and that I cut them off. This happened in the past from not getting enough water. We are watering it plenty now, and the tips are browning again. This requires some investigating. My ideas are that either 

1. there's a root problem and it's not able to take in the water. 

2. It doesn't like the water quality of the city water/too much fertilizer

3. it's too hot

I want to get it figured out because it is making a flowering spike. The buds have turned brown before with the leaves, so I want to fix the problem before that happens! 

I want to unpot it and check on the medium to see if it's rotting, and therefore rotting my roots. I also don't want to repot it right now because it is trying to flower. It's a catch-22. I think we will unpot it and check the roots and hope it flowers again. I think we might be able to do it without mangling the roots too much. I think we will also plant it in a clay pot instead of plastic to keep the roots cooler. 

If it's a water quality problem that is more annoying. We have plans to set up rain barrels but haven't had the chance yet. 

If it's a heat problem we are working on that for the sake of all the babies.

Phrag longifolium and Phrag kovachii x schlimii are both looking really good. No leaf tip browning really for them. 

Kovachii seems to finally be picking up and looking happy. I think it wanted more regular watering. We also sprayed it to get rid of any cooties it had. Hopefully it will continue to do well! I have been fertilizing!

Some of the Babies got Cooked :(

We forgot to turn the fan on in the greenhouse one day and it got way too hot in there. A couple of the orchids that were on the top shelf got cooked.

Rhyncholaelia digbyana had a few leaves burn and turn black. We have since cut off the bad parts.

The seedling Dendrobium spectabile's newest growth cooked right where the leaves attach to the pseudobulb. I had to cut those leaves off so now it's just a pseudobulb stump. The older set of leaves is still okay though.

The psychopsis I think got the worst of it. The tips of most of it's leaves cooked. It also got a few spots on it, from water sitting I guess?

We have now put the fan on a timer so it comes on automatically. It still gets hotter than we want in the greenhouse. It gets about 103 degrees Fahrenheit as the max. We are going to switch out the cardboard floor for gravel/rocks because the ground underneath will I think wick the coolness up and lower the temperature. At least I hope that will work. We are also trying to figure out some kind of mister to put in front of the fan to lower the temperature. 

We are having to water more often because it gets so warm in there. That's okay though.

State of the Union

The plants are all looking really good. I wanted to give the latest update on what's happening with all of them. Quite a few things are getting ready to flower. It is that time of year.

The Love Orchid is flowering. These are bad pictures I know. This is not it's most impressive display ever, but it didn't have ideal conditions with light and us forgetting to water a lot over the winter.

Maxillaria tenuifolia is finally flowering!!! It definitely smells like coconut. It only has three flowers, but maybe at least it did it. I think it likes more light than we were giving it before. I'm not really sure what else it would prefer to flower better. My method is usually bloom booster! haha. 

Miltassia has two flowering spikes again this year! I am going to water it more often this year because last year several of the buds blasted. My theory is that it needed more water while it was trying to flower. Many of the plants are like that, but I just get into the habit of letting them dry out, and can't seem to get out of it at flower time. The flowering spikes seem to be growing rapidly too. I swear this one is a couple inches longer since I took this picture a couple of days ago.

Encyclia tampensis also has two spikes! We are super stoked about this one. We just don't seem to be able to make a happy looking plant out of this one. It always seems to look a bit sad- too dry or something. 

Enyclia Cindy also has a flowering spike on it's honking huge growth that it made in the greenhouse over the winter. I like this plant. It is not too picky. And the flowers smell good.

The octoporchid is going to town again flowering. This year it is making a vertical flowering spike. The last two years we've had it flowering it made drooping spikes. I think it might be that it likes the higher light it was getting at the greenhouse. The air movement there is also fairly strong. Probably a combo. We will try to keep it at higher light levels since it seemed to like it just fine. We are also planning to repot this plant this year because the moss is old and yucky.

Sharry Baby is putting on two flowering spikes. One will be popping out really soon and the other a little further behind. It just can't help itself. It puts on a spike before the pseudobulb it's coming from is even mature yet. This is definitely a reliable plant.

The red Epi got repotted a month or two ago and one of the kikis is flowering already. This is the buds. I have started bloom boosting it to see if we can get some more flowers! Last year we only got two flowers from this plant because the spike got busted when we moved the first time and then busted again!

We only got 2 flowers again. It just didn't make any more buds. Probably because it was a small growth and had just been repotted. It was lovely though. 

The yellow and maroon cattleya is also blooming although the flower is a little mangled because it seems to have been stuck underneath the leaves. Still lovely though! It has a couple of other flower sheaths, so we will see what that brings us.

Ascocentrum ampullaceum is starting a flower spike too. I am praying it does well this year. Last year it made two flower spikes but the tip of the spikes died from the heat/dryness I think. So we only got a couple of flowers. I have been misting it every day. It has more moss and stuff in the basket with it now because it wasn't getting daily water at the greenhouse over the winter. I have left that in there for now to keep up the humidity. I've been using bloom booster on it every day too. I am determined that it will bloom well this year.

Sacolia lanceolata has three flower spikes. Only one is big though. It is way behind where it was last year (all the plants are behind really) because of the weather and different climate. It seems like it will do well. I want to leave it outside more in the fall to get as much sun as possible.

Catasetum is doing alright I think. It is growing. I nitrogen boosted it with the others. I think I wasn't watering it enough because it was making a somewhat wrinkled leaf. It still has all summer though we we'll see if it picks up the pace. It seems to be doing well from the repotting. The new roots have gone down into the medium.

Phragmipedium bessae hybrid is growing great. It has browning of the leaf tips most likely from not enough water all the time. We have been watering it more and keeping the water dish for it full. I think once I cut the brown off that it will be fine going forward. The new growths look really happy and they made nice new roots.

Spathoglottis got repotted after I seriously over sunned it. I thought I put it in a shady place because it's shady before and after work, but then I realized it was getting quite a bit of sun during mid-day. It got sad. We put it in a much larger 3 gallon pot. I'm not sure the dirt we used it very good though. We might have to redo it. We are now keeping it on the porch where it is mostly in the dark just like it prefers. I also am fertilizing it to get it going.

The Babies are Home!

We have finally set up the greenhouse in the yard and brought the babies home from the other greenhouse! It still looks like a gypsy tent.

We have run an extension cord out the window onto the covered front porch to plug in the fan. The fan is on the porch blowing through the greenhouse door. We are keeping one of the door curtains up so the fan can blow the air in properly. It has been really hot here a couple of days already also, and there hasn't been any sunburn or issues so far. We still have not been home during the day to see how much light is really coming in. This weekend we will see how the light is and decide it we have enough shading or too much etc. 

We couldn't believe the plants all fit on this one rack. And there's extra space! Only on the top shelves though where I'm too nervous to put most of the plants. I'm afraid they will cook up there. I have not moved the Phals outside. I want to see what the light is like all day before I do that. I really don't want them to burn when they have been doing so well. 

The plants seemed quite happy in the professional greenhouse, although I think they were getting a little too much light with not enough water. Quite a few of them are looking a bit yellow. 

I'm not hugely concerned about it. It's mostly the older leaves and pseudobulbs. The yellow leaves will eventually get bad and I will cut them off. The rest of the plant will be fine.

 We treated all the plants with Physan when we brought them home to make sure they don't have any cooties. Physan is a bactericide, fungicide, viruscide, and algaecide. It's supposed to be really good. We didn't notice any real signs of issues, but just in case. It has been warm, so not really good fungus conditions. 

We are on a mission to make them grow really well this year to make up for last year. A lot of them have been growing over the winter in the greenhouse which is awesome because they didn't grow very well last growing season. We are trying to do the nitrogen boost method to get good growth. We got Miracle Gro in low concentration and SuperThrive together that we are going to use for a few weeks. We will then switch back to our regular Dyna Gro- Grow formula. I have NOT used the high nitrogen on the plants that are spiking. I used our regular Dyna Gro-Bloom on those.