Finally…my NOID Phal keiki is in full bloom! This beautiful baby has five blooms, one of which has turned its back in a Blair Witch sort of way—probably because I moved the orchid while the buds were still developing. It’s ok, though, the plant is still gorgeous!
Wow, it has been WAY too long since I last posted here. I started my own personal blog a little while back, and I got all excited about that. I think I had burned myself out on writing about orchids after doing quite a bit of freelance writing about them, and I’ve needed some time to reclaim that energy. I don’t think I’m totally there yet, but I do have a couple very cool things to share with you (one of which I’ll save for a separate post).
This morning, my husband and I went to Whole Foods to pick up some stuff for a picnic in the park today (yay!). When we entered there was a big display of Phalaenopsis orchids for $12.99 (they usually sell them for about $19.99) and they had several peloric orchids. I’ve talked about peloric orchids a bit before, and I have a gorgeous semi-peloric Phal that’s currently in bloom:
In my last post I shared photos of a couple of my Phals that are in spike. Well, my peloric Phal has finally begun to bloom and it makes me so happy!
As I suspected, this first bloom is facing downward because I most likely didn’t keep the plant’s orientation to the light consistent while the buds were growing. Whoopsie…but it’s still gorgeous! This flower is just what I needed this morning. 🙂
That’s all for now!
Happy New Year, everyone! I have to say, I am so glad to see 2014 go. The second half of the year was not the best. Despite some really fun stuff (Comic-Con, our honeymoon), July through the end of the year also involved an inflammatory bowel disease diagnosis for me (fun times…but it’s ok—I’m actually doing well right now), family drama, and plenty of stress to go along with it. All of which also left me less than motivated to blog, so that’s partly why you’ve seen fewer posts from me. Needless to say, I was thrilled when the clock struck midnight on Wednesday because it signaled a fresh start.
On a lighter note, though there’s not a whole lot going on with my orchids at the moment, I do have one Phal that’s about to bloom (YAY!) and a second one whose spike is coming along nicely:
So you have a beautiful Phalaenopsis orchid, but its blooms are starting to wilt and fall off. What do you do now?! First of all, don’t freak out and throw your plant in the garbage; fading flowers are totally normal and they do NOT mean that your orchid is dying! Orchids can live for years and years and years with the proper care. Part of this proper care is knowing when and where to cut the flower spike. This is one of the most common questions I get in the comments section of my blog posts, so I thought it would be helpful to write about how to proceed once your Phal (the most widely available type of orchid) has finished blooming.
I’m finding that my post about how to identify whether you have an orchid spike or a root is my most viewed post by far. For example, just in the past week, my spike* vs. root post has been viewed nearly 6x as many times as my second most viewed post of the week. Clearly, “is it a root or is it a spike?” is a big question for new orchid owners!
So in the interest of helping orchid growers out even more, I decided to do another post on this topic, this time with LOTS of photo examples to help better illuminate what a root looks like and what a spike looks like. If you haven’t read my original post, I recommend doing so before you dive into this one. All the below photos are of orchids in my own collection. Because you’ll see more roots growing from your orchid than spikes, let’s begin with root pics:
