The first half of January doesn’t feel like the beginning of anything. It’s more a drizzly, twilit interruption;
I rather liked this quote from an article I read… rest of the article was pointless, but the quote summed up nicely how it feels at the moment. My orchids seem to be in stasis following the autumn and winter blooms. Only one lone Phalaenopsis is getting close and that seems to be taking its sweet time. My Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera) seems to be blooming again, but like the orchid is moving so slowly its almost imperceptible. My guess is it knew I wanted to repot it and divide it and decided to be awkward!
Other orchids are growing well, including my Maxillaria tenuifolia which since late summer has grown a fair number of new pseudobulbs but nothing in spike.
Even my Ludisia discolor has been and gone. Its nearly time for it to be repotted and trimmed, I’m trying to keep it low and bushy otherwise it gets leggy and unkempt – much like its owner!
In order to give myself something horticultural to do I turned to a new orchid species for me. Pleiones. I acquired some bulbs of an unknown hybrid and after sticking them in the fridge for a few months decided it was high time they got potted up. The Ludisia, the cyclamen (seedlings, see below) I want to be potted in something ‘nice’ so I’d also acquired some terracotta bulb pans also idea for the shallow rooting Pleiones.
From all my reading online, especially the excellent pleione.info I decided on a basic mix of orchid bark, some perlite and a little sphagnum moss. The mix is currently dry although there is a little moisture in the moss. I planted the bulbs so about half was covered then added a layer of bark as a top dressing to cover up the the tip. The two pans are currently in my highland tank as I don’t have a greenhouse, come the spring they’ll be going outdoors until the late summer when they go dormant again. I also have some smaller bulbis of a known species that I’ll pot up the same way shortly.
Bit of a rambling blog post this one, so hope anyone reading excuses my brain-dump. There is an exception to the ‘non blooming’ but that is the feature of a later blog post as well being related to the last one, so this hopefully serves to break things up a bit.