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. 

Another dud plant

We got this cirrhopetalum as well from the orchid club meeting like the stupid Brassias. Someone was giving away bare roots pieces of a bulbophyllum which I can't remember. We planted it right away on a 4" flat basket with sphagnum like we do most of our bulbophyllums. It seems to have a serious fungus problem. There were some black marks on it, but they are really bad now. I sprayed it with the copper stuff but that doesn't seem to have helped. We are going to pitch it. I want to save the flat basket though because it's new. We will bake it in the sun to get rid of any cooties. It is also not making any new growths right now. If it were growing I might be less inclined to pitch it.

Psychopsis is making new growths and I'm nervous

The psychosis is making two new growths, and I'm really nervous about it. We have killed one of these plants before because water got down in the new growth and caused rot. The tricky thing is that the growth can be fully mature before it rots, which I don't really understand. I have been super careful about water it. I've mostly been trying to water it just by soaking it instead of watering it from the top. I wait a long time between waterings because it's planted in coconut husk which holds a lot of water. We've sliced holes in the plastic of the pot to allow for more airflow since it's not hot like a greenhouse with us. I am hopeful that everything will go well!

Dendrobium kingianum

Also at the last orchid club meeting someone was giving away kikis from Dendrobium kingianum, so we took one and potted it up. They are supposedly easy to grow. My research found that they want to dry out between waterings and they can take a lot of sun. They can also handle a really wide temperature range from freezing to upper 90s.

We planted it in a  little 4" clay pot with bark and pebbles mix. We'll see how it does! Everyone speaks highly of them.

BL: Yellow Birds

We won something at the raffle they have every month at the orchid club meeting. We chose the Yellow Birds because I really like them. It's in a 8" basket with bark mix, although there's not much mix left. It doesn't seem to mind though. We're trying to give it as much sun as we can in the house and water when it gets dry. We will probably try to add some more medium to the basket, but other than that just let it be. They seem to be pretty easy based on friends that have them and our experience with Brassavola nodosa (one of the parents).

It did have more flowers, but they have since fallen off. I'm not sure why it has so much red pigment to the flowers and some of the leaves too. I'm assuming it's because it was getting a lot of sun before we got it. I wonder if this one wants less sun than Brassavola nodosa which wants tons of sun. 

Repotting is upon us. Round 1

We have begun our spring repotting. It didn't seem like we had that many things that needed repotting at first, but then we acquired a few new things that needed it. We spent forever at the place trying to pick out the right pots etc. to put things in. I have been trying to be good about fertilizing, but we are just not up and running properly for fertilizing easily. It's been a struggle just to keep everything watered properly.

Sheryl kurizaki- a tiny bulbophyllum got repotted into a 4 inch wide 1 inch tall plastic basket in sphagnum. So far it looks happy. It had just run out of room in the old setup.

Dendrobium aggregatum also got repotted into a larger plastic basket- 6 inches instead of 4 inch. We planted it in all moss since when it is getting watered it doesn't care how wet it is. It also got a yellow leaf with black spots. I cut off the suspect leaf and sprayed the whole thing with copper spray (like I said spraying is my new thing). There are still a couple of little black spots on a couple of leaves but they aren't expanding, so we are keeping an eye on it. I forgot to take a picture of it. We were able to repot it early because it didn't flower this spring.

The red epi went nuts making kikis at the greenhouse. We waited until it had nice long roots and repotted it all. We put all the kikis and the original plant into a much bigger pot. It was in a 3" plastic pot and now it's in a 6" clay orchid pot. We're using regular bark mix. So far so good. This is the only Epi we really have left.

Leptotes bicolor got repotted into a 4 inch basket with sphagnum moss. We were going to put it into a larger pot, but the guy at the greenhouse said they prefer baskets. I'm hoping it will flower this year. It didn't last year, and I know it is plenty big enough. I might have to look into what it wants a bit more. We were told to treat it like a cattleya. It might be drying out more than it really wants to. Probably the new potting situation will help with that.

Catasetum is growing really well. We repotted it into a bigger 6" plastic pot in sphagnum moss. I have been watering and fertilizing it. The growth is probably about 8" tall. There are a lot of roots but they seem to prefer growing sideways rather than down, so they are all sort of bunched up at the top. I'm hoping now that they have medium around them they will grow down. I would like to be fertilizing it more. I wanted it in a plastic pot again because I like to be able to easily pull the whole root mass/plant out and look at it over the winter when it's drying out. Then I can spritz the roots to keep them from totally desiccating. We repotted it because there wasn't enough room in the old pot for the new growth. Also the medium was kind of hard at the top and I thought it would be hard for the new roots to get down in there and establish. So far so good. I keep being afraid this plant is doing right, but it has been ok so far.

I've been having a hell of a time getting it to grow straight. I have to rotate it regularly. It wants to be outside where the light it up instead of sideways.


The pink Dendrobium we were given by someone in the orchid club also got repotted. It had been planted in rocks in a shallow 6" clay orchid pot. Much of the plant was growing over the edge of the pot. We repotted it into the same pot with a bark mix instead. Hopefully that will help it feel happier about how much water it's getting. I think this plant is the phalaenopsis type dendrobiums that come from Home Depot etc. We learned at the Orchid Show in Asheville this past weekend that these want tons of sun, hot temps, and regular watering. We will try to provide that, but don't know if we can. The lady said it always tries to flower in the winter and blasts the buds- probably from cool temps or too dry. Maybe if we can get it to try and flower in the summer we can get some flowers out of it. It's not growing right now. I want to keep an eye on that.

We still have plenty more repotting to do. We are thinking of picking up the plants from the greenhouse in shifts and taking the finished ones back in shifts so we don't end up with too many at home. We will still keep some at home, especially those that were are treating from fungus etc.