Saturday, March 21, 2015





My grocery store bought orchids came with a lot of rotted roots. They were packed in sphagnum moss and the decorative pot covered all the root ventilation, I'm guessing that's why most of them came with rotted root. I had to spent a long time repot these ones and a couple more not in the picture. Some of them completely had no root left, fingers crossed that these will pull through because they are such pretty flowers!



Monday, March 16, 2015

  

I'm becoming a real fan of vanda orchids, this particular one is called "sunkiss" and it has small orange flowers.  The nursery where I bought them from put all their vandas in plastic pots, as a result the roots in the pot mostly rotted. This one probably hasn't been at the nursery for long and while it had started rotting, most of the roots are still alive and healthy. I trimmed off the dead roots and there is still plenty left to drape down naturally.


I'm slowly turning my tv room into a orchid green house, aside from having the proper humidity, it's got ample light and air movement, pretty perfect to keep orchids happy! 

Friday, March 13, 2015




I bought this orchid couple of years ago at a farmer's market, it never re-bloomed for me and the crown is somewhat twisted so the top new leaf growth kept breaking off. However it survived my beginner orchid caring which is HUGE! Recently a spike came up and it is producing a few flowers, even though still somewhat meager, I was already too excited to see the orchid under my care has not only survived but is blooming.  Since I haven't seen this orchid flower for so long, this morning was the first time I got to see it, sometimes I forget what the bloom look like!


This is another orchid I bought while I was living in a rental house while my house was under construction from the chimney fire.



Again after keeping it somewhat alive for two years, it finally managed to having flower buds coming out! I don't know what I did, but it's working:)


Another update of my rootless cattleya orchid from yesterday! Per a orchid nursery lady's advice, I am now keeping this orchid in a shadier part of my house with no watering except gently misting the leaves.  Finger crossed that new roots will grow out soon!

Thursday, March 12, 2015




A while ago I bought a beautiful little pink cattleya orchid from my local grocery store, it was so rare to find cattleyas at grocery stores for a mere $7 I had to grab it. This little cattleya is done blooming now but it has grown in size and is doing quite well on my shelf. 


Within the next few weeks I slowly accumulated three more of these tiny cattleya orchids from the same store, they were absolutely amazing and charming, even though I now have a second one of the pink orchid!


Although most of them are doing excellent right now, this second pink orchid though did not look quite right when I got it, mainly because the two flowers did not open completely like the other ones. I thought I could always repot it and deal with it later. Within a couple of weeks, one flower fell off and the other one's stem started turning yellow, it never quite bloom open completely.



Finally early this morning I took the orchid out of its pot and discovered that most of its roots had rotted away in a mainly sphagnum moss planting mix. After watching over a couple of videos I decided to clean on the roots and repot the orchid.


This is my poor girl after the early morning surgery, I soaked and rinsed new barks and a little bit of moss in water, trimmed off soggy black roots and cleaned the plastic pot that it came in.


I had to use a couple of stakes to hold the now rootless orchid in place! It's sitting on my tv room shelf now bathing in some gentle morning sun!


Now I'm just suppose to mist the orchid frequently and make sure it gets adequate sun. Now let's keep fingers crossed that the roots will grow and I can revive this little girl!


Now I've spent way too much time blogging and my pup is getting impatient!  Fie Fie learned a new trick lately, he jumps on my lap while I'm sitting on my desk chair to get my attention! He's the master of chair jumping... getting off of it is another story:) 

Monday, March 2, 2015


A few days ago I got this beautiful orchid wondering what the flower would look like. Non of the flowers had completely opened at that time but I was hoping that the they would turned out to be beautiful flowers.


Here's what the orchid looked like this morning! It's got a beautiful deep shade of pinkish purple with yellow center, and not all the flowers are completely opened yet!  

New Year Preparation

I always like to do a bit of preparation at the end of each year to welcome the new year, although this year things were very challenging, I...