I have a bunch of good news about my orchids and one bit of bad news, so I’ll start with the bad news first: I lost my Paphiopedilum Wizard of Oz âHausermannâs Totoâ AM/AOS x [Paph. Candy Apple x Paph. Pulsar]. It had been doing very poorly for quite some time, and just didn’t seem to want to recover, so two weeks ago I sent it to the great orchid farm in the sky. đ Orchid kill count: eight (I think??).
In much happier news, I have a lot of good growth going with a bunch of my orchids! Let’s take a look:
FinallyâI’m back with an orchid of the week! I’ve chosen to feature the Epidendrum radicans because there is a lovely, large specimen growing in my boyfriend’s parents’ backyard in California. This thing is really big…that’s what she said! (Sorry, I had to do it.)
If you follow my blog you may have noticed I haven’t posted in a couple weeks. I’ve been pretty busy and am doing a little traveling, so I haven’t had tons of time to post. I just got back in town yesterday (went to my 15 yearâYIKESâhigh school reunion in St. Louis, which was a lot of fun) and am leaving again this afternoon for a trip to southern Cali (where I might visit an orchid farm or two!).
Starting next week I should be back in the blogging business, and I have plenty to write about regarding my own orchids. For now, I leave you with this crappy iPhone pic of one of my big white Phals whose side shoot just bloomed yesterday! The blooms are quite a bit smaller than the first blooms off this spike, but that’s normal. They are still very lovely, and when I return from Cali I imagine at least a couple more of those buds will have opened. đ
One of my Zygopetalums has bloomed!!! It’s the NOID one that I bought at Trader Joe’s in June 2010, and I am so in love with it (click image to see larger version):
I went to Lowe’s on an errand for my boyfriend this weekend and when I saw that they had received a new shipment of Better-Gro orchids, it was pretty much inevitable that I would walk out of the store with at least one.
I ended up selecting a Rhynchostylis Gigantea ‘Peach’ that looked pretty healthy from what I could see through the packaging.
Rynchostylis Gigantea ‘Peach’…sorry for the yellow-tinged pic
As I’ve discovered with my other Better-Gro purchases, the potting medium was pretty gross. So I repotted the plant with fresh sphagnum moss when I brought it home and trimmed away a few rotten roots. I’ve never grown a Rhynchostylis before, so this is a first for my orchid collection. Let’s hope that I can get this baby to bloom!
So, I am a gigantic klutz. It’s like my body has no sense of where it is in relation to other objects. I am constantly running into things, even in my own apartment: stubbing my toes, slamming my shins into the coffee table, banging my elbows into the bathroom walls. I’ve been known to walk into walls. Recently I chipped a tooth slightly by banging it with a glass when I went to take a drink of water. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that last night when I went into my Orchid Room to get something off of my vanity table, my hand hit the top of the orchid spike that I’m experimenting on with Keiki Grow Paste. Yeah…the one that I updated you on yesterday. Apparently those new growths are pretty delicate, because I knocked part of the growth clear off. DAMMIT!!
I wasn’t really sure what to do, so I slathered some more KGP on the broken end in the hope that it will just sort of regenerate…like when a lizard’s tail is cut off and it grows a new one.
Sorry for the crappy iPhone pic!
I have no idea what will happen to the growth now. It’s too bad, because that’s the one that was farthest along in its development. So…we’ll see.
