The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Teenage Angst and the Orchid Show

 

My 14-year-old kept complaining that his socks were wet. “Why do your socks keep getting wet? Is there a hole in your shoe?” He took off his shoe. I took it from him and turned it over. His right shoe was missing its sole. How could he not know one of his shoes was completely missing its sole?

It was raining outside. Ignorance is definitely bliss, but now that I knew of the sole-less shoe, I had to buy him a new pair. So I started to hatch my evil plan.

You see, I had been reading the garden section of the paper and it just so happened that the shoe store was down the street from where the Orchid Exhibit was.

I didn’t have a lot of time to hit the shoe store and the Orchid Show, so this is how I managed it. I drove into the parking lot through a giant puddle, throwing a wall of water over some unsuspecting umbrella carrying pedestrian. Before the car had stopped moving I told my son to undo his seatbelt, run in and start searching through the sale shoes for something his size.

I leaped out of the driver’s seat, my car still rocking back and forth in PARK. I passed my son going through the front door of the store. I ran to the back of the store where the shoes were, bumping into an indecisive sports-bra buyer. I had three pair picked out before my son made it back to where I was holding three stacked shoeboxes.

I threw him into a chair, told him to take his shoes off, and put a different shoe on each foot. All three pairs fit, so I asked him to choose two. He did. We paid. We left.

On to the orchids.

As soon as I told my son where we were going next the angst set in. “I’m tired. How long do we have to stay? Are you going to take pictures? How many pictures? I’m hungry. I have a headache. I have a stomachache. My finger itches. My left arm just fell off. Can we go now? How about now? What about now? Can we go now? Now?”

We ended up spending as much time at the Orchid show as the Shoe Store.

Enjoy my hastily taken photos.

Bright Pink Socks

I was walking through my kitchen a couple of days ago, I just happened to glance over at my orchid window and I saw what looked like one of my bright pink socks stuck on top of one of my orchids.

Then I remembered I didn’t have a pair of bright pink socks.

But what I do have is bad eyesight.

So I looked a little closer and on further inspection I found this.

6323 LC Casitas Springs X BLC Mahika Yahiro. Interesting name. If it didn't still have a tag with it's name on it, I never would have guessed.

Cattleya Dreamin’

It is that time of year, and I am very excited to see some of my orchids blooming.

This is a Cattleya Memoria Ruby Cosby. It’s really fragrant.

Cattleyas generally bloom in the summer, normally in August, but this year, it’s a month early.

Cattleyas are orchids that like a lot of light, especially an eastern or southern Exposure.

They will not rebloom on old spikes like Phalaenopsis, so if you have one, do your plant a favor, and cut away the spent flowers.

I have heard that when you see a spike starting on a Cattleya, you should move it to a location with maximum light so it will develop stronger multiple blooms.

There’s another bloom on the way, but just this one fills my whole kitchen with its perfume.

I’m going to go smell my orchid now.

Stumble It!

How to Divide and Repot Your Cymbidiums. (or, Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Wrong)

When my mom died she left me dozens of cymbidiums. She died in April several years ago, and within days of her death I had hundreds of these amazing orchid flowers.

It was just like my mom to leave this world filled with flowers. It was her way of saying, “It’s O.K., life goes on, and everything will be alright.”

When I think of my mom I will always think about her love of dirt. The way she would spend morning until night gardening. Even in her eighties she would garden every chance she got. That is the one thing that never slowed for her.

So here I was with all these cymbidiums.

Hmmm. They flowered for many years after her death, every spring, no matter how much I abused them. Along with her orchids my mom left me a third of an acre of garden. So, with my own two acres—and my two little boys—time was scarce and the poor hard-working orchids were put on the back burner.

This year I noticed that there were very few blooms and very little new growth, maybe because the pots were so overgrown that many had split. In fact, some even had full-grown plants sprouting up from the ground through the orchid pots. I was an orchid abuser. Yes, among all the other things that I abused, I now had to add cymbidiums to the list.

Cymbidiums should be divided about every three years. If your plant has filled the pot and is now pushing against the side it is time to repot it.

So, after years of neglect, I finally broke down and started to divide them. Of course, I divided them right in the middle of their bloom cycle, so the small amount of blooms they had would never continue to fruition. Sad face. You are supposed to divide your cymbidiums after the old blooms have fallen off.

Another Bloomin’ Orchid

I still say that orchids are easy-peazy but I’m also very proud of myself lately because I have several orchids blooming at once—ones that have never bloomed before.

Here is the latest. I wish I knew what it was but, alas, it is one of my garage sale purchases and it came without a label. It is also extremely fragrant in a deep, earthy, musky, feminine sort of way.

The most important factor in growing orchids in your house is a good window with appropriate light.

 

To Cut or Not to Cut?

My girlfriend gave me two different orchids so I could make them re-bloom. One orchid she had cut off at the base. The other orchid had the old spike still attached.

Two weeks after I received the one with the still-intact old spike, it produced two more spikes at two of its nodes.

The other orchid has no spike in sight.

I don’t cut my orchids spikes off for just this reason. Orchids also produce baby orchids, or keikis, that also develop from nodes on old spikes. When I was in Hawaii, I remember that the locals called children keikis. I wonder if they were they referring to baby orchids—or are all Hawaiian babies called keikis? Another important piece of trivia to pursue.

There are two schools of thought about cutting off spent orchid spikes. Some orchids spike again from a node on an old spike. But the flowers produced are usually smaller, and on lankier stems. So, orchid growers usually cut the spikes off at the bottom in order to promote big, fat, compact blooms.

I’m all for instant gratification. So therefore I leave the spikes on my orchids until they turn brown.

I once had an orchid that bloomed for five years straight. I still have it. Of course it’s dead, but I’ve had it for ten years so I keep thinking that it will, all of a sudden, come back. It has one still-attached bent leaf that resembles dehydrated greenish leather. Maybe I’ll throw it out when that last bit of green has turned to brown.

Who knows?

I thought this was interesting. Here is a keiki that I cut off one of my orchids, one whos old spike I had left on. It is spiking.

This is the mother plant. It is also spiking at the exact same time. Like mother like son or daughter or keiki or baby orchid thingy.

Stumble It!