Spring has Sprung

Time to just shut up, sit back, and enjoy some of the fruits of all this labor...

This year's best cymbidium.

It's a cross between cymbidium devonianum 'stewart' crossed with stargold 'lucky strike'. Six pendant spikes just filled with beautiful flowers.

Mr. Lincoln shows what a classic red rose should look like.

Double Delight

Peace

Angel Face

Bletilla orchid

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Hanging by a Thread

I love this dendrobium. It has beautiful flowers, is very prolific, and grows very well under our eaves.

It's so prolific that it's grown way to big for the pot it's in. Time  for a repot.

I've separated it into two plants and will plant it into two pots (follow along with our epiphytic orchid repotting instructions here).

It's an epiphyte (meaning it grows on the side of trees in nature) so I'm planting it in bark chips.  A hammer helps to make sure the new potting mix is very tight on the roots.

Time to water in.

All done, now I have a fresh, hanging basket of orchids. I'll give the other pot away.

Darryl 
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Making Every Drop Count

Notice the three orchids on the top row starting at the second from the left. See how dry they are?

That's why I do sprinkler pattern checks now and again. You'll notice that the spray is not hitting the top row. Resetting it into first pot and re-aiming it fixes that problem.

Chores done, what else is happening this week? To start off, our first dragon fruit bud has come up.

The recently transplanted zucchini is putting out some spectacular flowers.

Anaheim chiles are looking great...

...and the cherry tomato hanging basket is about ready for first harvest.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The Weekly View

It's springtime in Southern California. Last year we had nothing you could call winter at all. This year, well, maybe a couple of weeks. We did have two nights of freezing at the beginning of January.

Now that we're in March, however, the cold is just a memory. Flowers are bursting out all over (see our orchid bench, above), veggie seedlings are coming along fine, and now the concern is making sure everything gets enough water for the 90+ degree heat wave we have coming this weekend.

Mr. Lincoln, our bellwether rose, has some fine maroon foliage popping up after pruning.

Grape clusters are already showing on our vine.

The bletilla orchid has not only awoken from its dormancy, it's now in bloom.

Unfortunately, the bougainvilleas can't get their blooms synchronized. Only the red is showing off, while the others are only green.

I'll live with it somehow.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Cyms, Dends, and Epis...it's Orchid Season Again

Not content to wait on my schedule, the orchids have gone ahead and started blooming. It's not a big deal but it pushes me to get cracking on giving them some care.

The problem with the cymbidiums is that their flower stocks are top heavy. This is also the time of the year that we get some big winds. If I don't do something, they'll snap off in a stiff breeze.

This guy is a good example.

I'll pull a bamboo stake out and put a twist-tie on it. I use the 'figure 8' method, where I cross the twist-tie across itself to put a cushion between the bamboo stake and the flower stock.

There, all done.

Other news on the orchid front...this little epidendrum will be pumping out dime-sized flowers throughout the season.

This dendrobioum...

...and this one also show buds and signs of a very spectacular bloom to come soon.

The last dendrobium, above, was a hanging basket but some rodent or bird dug a hole in the bottom so it's in the orchid infirmary to recover until we can repot it.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Hit Hard by the Drought but Not Quite a Knockout

Driest year on record. That was 2014. Already in January and February, we've had just about as much rain as we had all last year. Still, we're under mandatory 20% reduction and orders not to water our lawns more than twice a week.

Luckily, there are some plants in the garden that thrived even without all that water. The plumeria, at the top, bloomed better than ever. We even had strangers sneak up and pick the flowers.

Cherry tomatoes came alive in their hanging basket.

The chiles produced way more than we could ever eat and are still going strong.

Put them together and I've got a great salsa to use as a base for making chilequiles and eggs.
 

Orchids are a lot tougher than people give them credit for...

...and, of course, you can't really kill bougainvillea.

Mr. Lincoln proves that roses are also a great drought-tolerant plant, although the deer coming down from the dry mountains found the blooms irresistible.

Darryl

Copyright 2015 - All Rights Reserved

Orchids of the Earth

It's time to repot some cymbidiums.  As my mother-in-law would tell you, it's a chore I should do more often.

In general, cyms should be repotted every 2-3 years. It's not a tricky process but it is hard work and messy at times.

First, to determine which plants need to be repotted, look for plants that have filled up the entire pot. Maybe they look more dead than alive and the mix is broken down, that would be another sign that they need to be repotted.

You'll need the plant, a pot (usually I put them back in the same one, on very vigorous plants I might increase the pots size a bit), mix, trowel, hammer, and pruning seal (not shown above).

Knock the pot off. You can see this plant is more root that soil, indicating it needs repotting. With your fingers, reach in and break up the root ball. Remove as much soil as you can, along with dead roots.  I also remove the dead-looking back bulbs and maybe even some green growths to make a more centrally-shaped plant.

You can also pot the dead looking bulbs, as long as they feel very hard and firm to the touch, and new plants will grow from them.

Cymbidiums are terrestrial orchids, meaning that they grow in the ground in the wild unlike epiphytic orchids (like cattleyas, dendrobiums, and phaleanopsis), which grow on the side of trees.

This means you can't use straight bark chips on them like the other orchids. I buy a pre-made mix from an orchid nursery but you can also make your own using 50% small to medium bark chips, 25% perlite, and 25% peat moss.

You can see that there's a hole in my bag. Want to know where the Cheapskate is? Just follow the trail of cymbidium mix.

Put an inch or two of mix in the bottom of the pot. Spray pruning seal on any wounds left by tearing off old bulbs. Find the leading growing edge of the plant. Cymbidiums don't grow out in all directions, the green point at the bottom of the bulb above is the new growth. The plant will grow in this direction.

Put the none-growing edge up against the edge of the pot and the new growth facing the center.  Fill with mix all the way to the edge of the pot. Use a hammer handle to pound the mix down as tight as you can.

If you've pounded the mix tight enough, you should be able to lift the plant by the leaves and the pot will not fall off.

Once done, it should look something like this with the growing edge given room to grow across the pot for the next two or three years.  Water it in and put back on your orchid bench.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved