Precious Little Jewels & Spikes

Whoops…I forgot to do an Orchid of the Week post last Friday. For shame!

After my Lowe’s orchid shopping extravaganza last week, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for my new tolumnia’s blooms to open. I did my regular Sunday morning orchid watering session yesterday and noticed that one of the buds was starting to open!

Such amazing, velvety petals!

And this morning, I got up to discover the fully opened, gorgeous bloom:

My first Tolumnia bloom

How beautiful is that?? A couple of the other buds are beginning to open, so in the next few days I’ll have several little beauties. Woohoo!!

Also on the Woohoo!! front, I noticed that yet ANOTHER one of my phals is starting to put out a spike. I guess phal blooming season is coming up—they do generally bloom in the winter. So I currently have three phals that are throwing spikes. The newest one that I discovered is the one that I bought at the Union Square Greenmarket about a year and a half ago. This will already be the second spike that it has put out for me—it spiked and bloomed earlier this year. You can see the very beginning of this orchid’s spike in this image: it’s the small light green bit in the middle:

Spike starting to break through

And just for fun, an updated photo of my peloric phal’s spike:

It’s very clearly a spike now!

That’s all for now. So much orchid excitement in my house these days! So many exclamation points are necessary!

Expanding My Orchid Collection…Again

This morning when I was still in bed, my boyfriend texted me with this photo of mini oncidiums that he saw for $9 while running an errand at Lowe’s:

Mini oncidiums!

Well, that got me out of bed pretty quickly. I ate yogurt and cereal and gulped down some coffee, then went on the orchid hunt. Conveniently, this Lowe’s is only about a 10 minute walk from my house. And suddenly, I was in orchid heaven…

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Lots of New Orchid Growth!

I was checking out my orchids this morning and I discovered that my Iwanagara Appleblossom is already starting to put out two new roots, which is super exciting because the plant was left with only three decent roots after I cut away the bad ones. Knowing the state of the orchid’s roots, I was a little unsure whether I’d be able to nurse it to health, but things are already starting to look up:

New roots on Iwanagara Appleblossom
New roots on my Iwanagara Appleblossom

As I mentioned yesterday, there is a whole lot of new growth going on with my orchids, and I’m so thrilled that, of course, I have to share some pics here! Click on each photo to see a larger version.

Tolumnia root growth
Lots of new root action on my Tolumnia
New shoot on Dendrobium Eama Queen
New shoot on my Dendrobium Eama Queen
New shoot & roots on NOID Dendrobium
New shoot & lots of roots on my NOID Dendrobium
New stalk growing on a NOID lady slipper
New stalk growing on a NOID lady slipper
New leaf on lady slipper orchid
New leaf on my lady slipper “Wizard of Oz” seedling
New leaf on blooming Phal
New leaf on my blooming NOID phal

Great things are happening! It makes me so happy!

My new orchids. Let me show you them.

Yay!! My Hausermann orchids arrived a couple hours ago via UPS. Of course I sat around inside all day waiting for them to show up, but it’s nasty outside so I can’t complain.

I had a mini panic attack this afternoon while waiting for the package (side note: now that I’m watching The Wire, “package” makes me think of heroin) because I suddenly wasn’t sure if the orchids would arrive in pots. I didn’t have five extra pots lying around the house and didn’t want to have to make an emergency run to Home Depot in the rain. Plus, the orchids I’d ordered were on sale so I thought maybe pots wouldn’t be included.

Fortunately all of my new plants came potted. I’ve already repotted each one so that I could check out their roots, and I took lots of pictures to post here. So I guess this is a sort of “orchid unboxing” post…how nerdy am I??

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My First Online Orchid Order

In my first post I mentioned that I have nine orchids in my home. Well, at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future, five more orchids will be added to my collection!

I’d been eyeing some of the sale orchids at Orchids By Hausermann for awhile, and one day I finally broke down and ordered some – for a grand total of $48.80 including shipping. That’s less than $10 per orchid!

Unfortunately, I didn’t consider the fact that I was placing this order in the dead of winter when weather conditions are not exactly ideal for shipping orchids. Hausermann’s policy is to wait till it warms up to ship them, so I’m sitting here on pins & needles waiting for warmer weather. I do appreciate that they take shipping safety into consideration – it shows that they’re serious about orchids and customer satisfaction!

The orchids that will one day arrive at my door are:

Paphiopedilum Vini

Paphiopedilum Vini

Phalaenopsis Laurel Blau ‘Hugs & Kisses’

Phalaenopsis Laurel Blau 'Hugs & Kisses'

Phalaenopsis Yellow Butterfly ‘Amber’

Phalaenopsis Yellow Butterfly 'Amber'

Tolumnia Golden Sunset ‘Red’

Tolumnia Golden Sunset 'Red'

Zygopetalum (Blue Blazes x Blue Blazes)

Zygopetalum (Blue Blazes x Blue Blazes)

Photos above are all from Hausermann’s website. None of these orchids will be in bloom when they arrive, so it will be fun to see how long it takes me to get them to show their pretty flowers. Each one should look similar to the photo. I’m excited to try growing different types of orchids aside from the ever-popular phals (though of course I have plenty of those!).

You can count on a blog post from me as soon as these lovely guys arrive!