Happy New Year!!🎆 Cheers!🥂
Another year went by with lots of blooms and interesting discussions and here we are looking at a brand new year!
I start with a now pretty much fully open Brassavola Little Stars! It smells awesome walking into the dark greenhouse in the evening.
And this Barkeria melanocaulon is blooming from 4 spikes this year. This one always starts blooming in the Fall and keeps on going right into Spring.
I can't back up far enough to get the whole plant into the picture, this one is bare root and those roots are fairly substantial.
Name: Big Bill Livonia Michigan (Zone 6a) If you need to relax, grow plants!!
Gee wiz Ursula, pardon my French, but that is the best darn grown Barkeria I think I have ever seen, bar none!! *¥+~<#€! Well done and it is a beauty too!
And what can I say about the Little Stars??? Except I am too embarrassed at just how poorly I do with that hybrid.
Fireworks have simmered down. I am going back to sleep!
Orchid lecturer, teacher and judge. Retired Wildlife Biologist. Supervisor of a nature preserve up until I retired.
Exceptional as usual Ursula. Wow, on that Barkeria, what a lovely start to the New Year.
I remember being so excited when I found a Little Stars at Lowe's and while it has lived and really does not look bad, it has not bloomed and it is starting to lose the leaves. They just soften at the base and fall off. It does not seem to have any obvious rot, it looks clean, but something is going on. Afraid it is destined for the trash before it spreads its mystery malady.
Minds are like parachutes; they work better when they are open.
Name: Big Bill Livonia Michigan (Zone 6a) If you need to relax, grow plants!!
Alice. No blooms = not enough sun.
The plant may be suffering due to the lower light intensity. The falling leaves sounds to me like the natural way that nodosa looses its leaves. They only stay on the bulb for three years tops.
Good luck.
Orchid lecturer, teacher and judge. Retired Wildlife Biologist. Supervisor of a nature preserve up until I retired.
My Little Stars always hangs in maximum exposure in the greenhouse and outside in Summer. I plopped it years ago into an Epiweb basket and that's where it will surely stay as the roots are totally implanted throughout that stuff.
Regarding the Barkeria melanocaulon, I find this one easier than Barkeria spectabilis. Keep it warm, sunny and flood daily.
Hmmm, maybe I will try it under a lamp, right now it gets as much light as the windows in my house allow. With this arctic weather we are having it does have to stay indoors. 36 this morning.
Minds are like parachutes; they work better when they are open.
When I took the dog out at 7:00 this morning it was 58 degrees, breezy and light rain. We need the rain but the rest of this is not welcome. Wow on the Barkeria, Ursula! There is a blue ribbon for sure.
I apologize for sending back some reruns but these large plants are reaching their prime and I didn't want to lose them in the new year transition. After doing some research, I am going with Bill's suggestion of Ctsm. expansum. I can't find the f. Alba as being official so I am just going with Ctsm. expansum. In full bloom now with 19 flowers.
And Mr. Floppy Flower is coming along nicely and still with blooms to open. Here is Bct. Simba's Song (Bsn. Maikai x C. purpurata).
This is Ett. Volcano Trick 'Orange Fire' (Ctt. Trick or Treat x Epi. stamfordianum), winner of the Member's Choice Award at our last club meeting.
And finally this poor Guarianthe [Gur.] deckeri that has been plagued with scale that just returns as fast as I clean it up. This one flower may be its last gasp.
What a nice start to the month !
Ursula, I don't think I've ever seen a nodosa with more flowers on it...that is gorgeous!
Jim, you have a nice assortment of plants blooming at the moment. I am not a huge fan of the Ctsm. group...but I do like the pure white one you got very much! Your Jack Sloniker has really nice colors...and that lip!
I just finished bringing the plants in.
I'm happy to have enough in bloom to make a couple of displays...because the rest of the group isn't quite spectacular
Ursula, the curtains are doing a decent job of stopping the wind... and that's about all. I've ordered a gadget that will record the high and low temperature out there. But my unscientific evidence is that during the nighttime there is no difference between inside the curtain and outside the curtain. It's too big an area to heat with my very small heater and too many gaps at the top to be efficient. I want to try Alices concept of non LED Christmas lights on the bench with perhaps a blanket over the plants...but I don't have any of the non LED lights ! My neighbors are horrified as they think I will burn the neighborhood down by setting the lights on the wooden benches. I did give each plant a good looking at while I carried them 2 by 2 and found some buds and some scale so it was productive..I also got a rough number 300..I would have guessed closer to 500 This is when I REALLY miss my little greenhouse.
Tell your neighbors outdoor Christmas lights are used to being around wood. I have some to spare but it is unlikely I could get them to you in time. IF you have any ideas they could go out tomorrow. I also have a plain old lamp with an equally old fashioned incandescent bulb set among some large plants outside. Between that and the seedling heat mats they are sitting on, it is toasty. Weather is going to be dry until Wednesday, I will have to watch for showers (snow?) and keep the lamp out of the wet weather or the house may burn down. The Ti, lights and all, is covered with a polar fleece blanket now. All the dollar stores are chock full of those polar fleece throws and as the weather warms they sell them off for a dollar or two. I keep a bunch around for cold nights, I am just not used to cold weeks. We'll see how that works out.
Minds are like parachutes; they work better when they are open.
Moving 300 plants just like that is a job. Perhaps eventually you will figure something out, perhaps in addition protecting each bench separately with a tarp or something like that.
Short of enclosing the space like Jim, I'm at a loss. The benches can be moved together.. but I have to empty them to do that. I can't put heavy duty rollers on the legs, because they actually sit outside the patio edge on the ground and one long side and short side are attached. I'm pretty sure my house electric panels couldn't handle a green house heater and we don't have gas in my neighborhood. It wasn't an unpleasant task today, as I did it before the temperature started dropping. I still think Alice's idea is worth a shot and I'll look and see what's at my ACE hardware store in the Christmas clearance area tomorrow.. or on Amazon. Alice how dense do you think the lights need to be? Just run up and down the rows between the pots? I think I saw that this weather is a 50year record for my area.. so (hopefully) it won't be this bad again for a while!
Lindsey, you are only going to need to raise the temp a few degrees, I would just do like you said and run them up and down the rows. Maybe some of your neighbors have older strings of lights around. As long as they are not LED they will get warm. I've had that string on the Ti for a while now, we had a few cold nights about 2 weeks ago and it has not burned the plant at all.
Keep your eyes open for some seedling heat mats in late spring after the growing season, that is when the price drops. The ones I have are 2' x 4' and you can squish a lot of pots on them.
Minds are like parachutes; they work better when they are open.
