I was away for a good three weeks. During that time care was spotty, in the hands of a friend I think angrily or maybe just impatiently sprayed jets of water at my babies, dislodging not a few. I was home then for a short five days and then back north to see my kids in Boston. My fingers ...
Simple. Keep it easy. Easy. Keep it simple. Nice and easy. Nice and simple. We tend to fuss and fume over our orchids. But let’s face it. They’re big kids and they can take care of themselves. I started mine in trees in the blazing heat of July. Probably did everything wrong. “Tried” to kill them. But they lived, ...
Janet famously said the other day “things don’t always go the way you expect them to.” It was her usual understatement for a twist of fate in her gardening world. In a word: her raised beds were going from being a giant stack of soil pancakes to a short stack of one or two flapjacks. Not to mention the ...
My inspiration came from the orchids I rescued when we first moved here. They were pushed way back in the shade in decrepit wooden slat baskets. Must have been there for at least the two years the previous owners were absent. Their roots were extensive, hugging the wood and seeking out every corner where moisture might accumulate. In the ...
The full moon is pouring in from the east across Tampa Bay. It fills the orchid grotto and lights up Rhyncholaelia (Brassavola) glauca. It’s a waxy flower. Looks like many tried and aborted on this same plant but here it is in its magnificent presence. My friend Minh tells me to try smelling it at night so with the ...
Or is it play? The young orchids in the trees are a demanding bunch. The days get longer. The afternoons get hotter. You know you have to do something to keep them going. We were at the beach at 7:30 this morning collecting seaweed for the garden and for my garbage pail full of smelly fertilizer water. The empty ...
I’ve started to look at the orchids differently. Part of it is that they’re part of a larger community of epiphytes in my garden. They share the canopy with bromeliads, air plants, cacti, ferns, and gesneriads (cousins of the African violet). There are even epiphytic milkweed relatives called Hoya in my garden. I guess it’s been a busy few ...
Calvin asked me this. I was a little embarrassed cuz he’s grown orchids for huge amounts of time more than me. His sense of humor is wry, dry, and sly so I wondered for a minute if he was yanking my chain? Whatever. I took his question at face value and it’s something to ponder over anyway. What might ...
It was a victim almost before it got to this garden. Janet found it at a huge tent sale in Sarasota, just when we were starting with the garden. Victor was visiting so the whole scene must have been disarming to him. It was October but it was plenty hot. She threw this giant of an orchid into our ...
There’s a huge amount written about the way orchid flowers produce pheromones. And all this writing and research is focused on the way orchids “fool” pollinators into visiting them, and doing the orchids’ reproductive behest. But wow. Not a word seems to have been written about the other universe of orchid pheromones. I first suspected that my orchids were ...
It’s not just that I’m lazy. It’s late morning and I’m about halfway done with watering but I had pulled out my phone to take some pictures and this reminded me. A friend the other day called Phalaenopsis orchids “boring” and I have to say I disagree. Yes they are supermarket orchids. Yes they are hard to kill. Yes ...
Why did orchids species (not hybrids) evolve flowers? For us or for their own reproduction? Easy answer right? It’s funny though that we are so focused on orchid flowers. Not just us amateurs. Darwin was transfixed by their complexity and ingenuity, from which he inferred many of his findings on the evolutionary process.I have to admit I was pretty ...
Jewel orchid is the name given to a bunch of different genera of small, soil-growing orchids. They are generally grown more for the beauty of their leaves than their flowers. But if you know me you know it doesn’t matter. I grow all my orchids for the joy of watching them survive and thrive “in the wild,” without pots, ...
Yes!!!! This means my orchid clumps are little places of life, breathing enough water vapor and oxygen to attract bugs and their predators, the spiders. If you’ve ever seen the way a spider web traps moisture then you can imagine how happy I am. It’s as if another moist biofilm of protection is being established around the orchids. Not ...
I broke down today and bought some epsom salt (magnesium sulfate). “Why?” You might ask. I’ve been reading a bit on this substance which has, it seems, no substantive orchid research behind it! Kind of interesting.But as a botanist I know that magnesium is the central ion of every chlorophyll molecule. It is primally, absolutely essential to photosynthesis. And ...
I don’t know how to say it any other way. The orchid roots have gone wild. Cattleya labiata is a good example. She has sent roots pretty much radially across her tree branch. I think if you accounted for the topography up there you could map her root growth pretty much like the outward aiming spokes of a wheel. ...
I knew from what I’ve read that fungi played a role in orchid germination. In that situation the orchid seeds, which lack nutrients of their own, depend on the fungus to supply them with what they need to germinate. I didn’t know that adult orchids also partner with fungi. And I’ve never had the opportunity to observe this in ...
Yesterday’s mail brought an order of about twenty orchids. I knew they were in two inch pots but boy were they tiny! Tiny orchids are a beautiful thing. We saw some a couple of months ago at an amazing exhibit at Selby Botanical Garden. They were part of a large glassed in terrarium and the landscape they inhabited was ...
We love our lawns. So green and lush and uniform and open. So clean and pristine. But like the dozen or so spider egg sacs Janet found under our couch today, an explosion of hatching we didn’t really want to see, Mother Nature likes things a little more hidden, more complex, perhaps a bit darker. I ran across the ...
It’s been a bit of a rocky road with my Sobralia, a terrestrial orchid that needs to be planted in soil. This particular one also needs kind of shady conditions according to the grower. It came to me in great shape. I especially loved the sort purple hairs at the base of the stem and along the leaves, which ...