Friday, February 26, 2010

Bees & Butterflies

Just finished reading my March/April 2010 Gardening How-To Magazine and there is an article on how to attract bees and butterflies! Bees are something I have been striving to attract and they seem to love my thyme and this other plant.....forget the name! I love watching them go from flower to flower. Turns out that thyme is one of the plants that bees love according to this list!

I'm not sure how I am going to feel about attracting butterflies so they will lay eggs on plants to feed the caterpillars though. I am not familiar with what are good and bad caterpillars. I would hate to accidentally kill the good ones!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Orchid Meeting Flea Market

I brought seven Pinguicula morananesis that were in bloom or in bud and sold them all for $5 each. I also brought a nobile Dendrobium and sold it for $1 as well as some dragonfly clips for $1 also. I brought two books too, but no one wanted them. :\ They're more coffee table type books though, nothing informative, just pretty pictures to look at.

I did pretty well. I only managed to buy one orchid only! A Paph. Delrosi! Had no idea what it would look like, but I love Paphs and at $10 it was the right price! I googled it on my phone and to my surprise it's a really pretty flower! I am definitely excited :D If you don't know what it is, do a search for it. If it were my picture I'd put it up on here, but I don't want to be stealing anyone's images!

Pot Skirts

Tonight I decided to tackle making my pot skirts for the orchid show next month. I had a heck of a time getting the tension right and had to ask for help! I finally got it close to right, except I think I measured the fabric a bit too tight. It will work, but only for the types of pots I use! I will need to make some other sizes too. The elastic proved tricky, but I got the hang of it after a few missed pieces!

Tomorrow is an orchid meeting so I probably won't have time to do more, but I may cut up more fabric so they are ready to be sewn just so I have an excuse to not put away my mess in the livingroom! :) I so need a craft room! Well...I do have a room that I could use for stuff like this, but it's no where near warm enough for me to hang out there for long periods of time! Plus there isn't exactly a table in there that I could use. I could haul one up there, but bringing one up from the basement to that attic room is a bit much! Not sure where I would put it anyhow...if only that bed wasn't there! In the five years we've lived in this house that bed has been used ONCE! So not worth having it in that room!

Friday, February 19, 2010

Master Gardener Re-Certification

Tonight I went to the Phipps Master Gardener Re-Certification Ceremony. It's hard to believe that I was certified back in 2005 and this will be my fifth year doing so!

Our guest speaker was Doug Oster from the Post Gazette. His book was what made going organic so easy for me! He has a new book out called Tomatoes Garlic Basil, which he brought a few copies tonight and signed them for those that bought one, which I did! Those are the three things that I must grow every year! He remembered that I had gone organic a few years back and asked how it was going. I told him that my grass looks great! There are far less bare spots from the dog! Who woulda thunk? He said that the lawn was the hardest for people to do so, but it didn't seem that way for me. It was all or nothing! I chose to go for it all and chose nothing!

I do put down corn gluten meal as a pre-emergent as well as fertilizer, but really nothing else besides that! If I see a weed I don't like I pull it. I have been working on a patch of clover for two years now. Clovers are good actually....they put nitrogen back into the soil, but they sure don't look nice! I did find out a bit of calcium slows their growth!

Anyway...I am awaiting my time to put down some of that corn gluten. I think I'm out...going to have to pick up some! I also just realized the down side to an online gardening journal....I can't really sketch on here. Oh well...

Today was sunny and above freezing so a lot of snow melted! Check out the icicles on the back of my house!

Dendrobium kingianum

I discovered that Dendrobium kingianum is in spike tonight as I
searched my light stand hoping that more of my orchids would spike in
time for next month's show! Hopefully it will bloom in time!

-
Cindi
Rabies Challenge Fund :: www.rabieschallengefund.org

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Pinguicula 'Aphrodite'

From Other Plants


This is one of my new butterworts in bloom. One of its parents is Pinguicula morananesis, hence the large pink flower. It's not quite as magenta as its parent flower, but rounder. Pretty eh?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Still No Spikes :(

I keep looking and looking, but there still are no new spikes coming! Of course, the more I look the more likely I'm not going to get them probably. That's the way it goes usually! Paph. lowii's spike is doing well. The Masdevallia with one flower spike is opening now, but that's it! Phal. equestris and Aphrodite are in spike. Hopefully those bloom in time for our display. I have yet to master the timing of orchid blooms! I did give most of them another shot of bloom booster tonight. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Epies Fertilized!

So I'm supposed to start fertilizing my epiphyllums in Feb with a low N, but high P fertilizer. I had none of that type of fertilizer and since I'm trying to go organic I decided to put bone meal into them instead and water with aquarium water to water it in. I wasn't able to put worm castings on unfortunately because I had just added some dry matter and mixed it all up and it needed more time to break down. Hopefully I will get some blooms this year now that I have some guidance!