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You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: More Orchids, As Inspiration

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: More Orchids, As Inspiration

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: More Orchids, As Inspiration

Apologies to Glidwirth (and thank you, WaterGirl) — I failed to categorize the first post as a ‘garden chat’, so of course it didn’t show up when I searched for those.!

A confession — I owe somebody an apology for not posting these pics sooner. I have distinct memories of posting the first part of their story, and then sending them a note I’d saved some for a second post… but now I not only can’t find the original emails, I can’t even find the post! With all due apologies:

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: More Orchids, As Inspiration 1

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: More Orchids, As Inspiration 2

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: More Orchids, As Inspiration 3

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: More Orchids, As Inspiration 4

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: More Orchids, As Inspiration 5

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: More Orchids, As Inspiration 6

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Apart from battling gremlins, internet or otherwise…

What’s going on in your gardens, this week?

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  3. 3.

    satby

    Orchids are so lovely, thanks mystery poster! Someday when I have less cats to eat them and a room where I can grow them, I’d like to try growing a few orchids.

  5. 5.

    satby

    Going on it my garden: today I’m going to cut a few spring flowers to bring inside and enjoy while the next three nights of hard freeze that’s predicted wipes out the fruit and other tree blossoms. Not looking great for fruit harvests in the upper Midwest again this year.

  6. 6.

    Narya

    This week in my farm share’s garden: ramps, which I never had. I cooked them in olive oil and made a pesto; today some of that will get mixed with lemon and honey to use on a sammich.

  9. 9.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Narya: I hunt ramps every spring, but it’s interesting to hear of them coming from a farm share, because I’ve never heard of them being cultivated.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I have submitted to the garden gods and accept that 90% of my seed starts will never germinate and am buying a few plants so that we can have at least a few tomaters and peppers. I did have a few eggplants germinate so there is that.

    We were supposed to get a hard freeze last night, but it feels like 38 out there right now so I doubt it will. They are predicting another hard freeze for tonight. I covered my wife’s beloved peonies with garbage bags but everything else was on it’s own. We’ll see how they all do. My clematis are blooming, same for the columbine and bleeding hearts, not gonna hold my breath for any of them. The redbuds and dogwoods should be fine, they are well adapted to the vicissitudes of Ozark weather.

    The past few years we have had a series of frog choker rain events, and they are having an effect on our land. The state highway curves around the front of our property and it is graded in our direction, hence all the rain falling on it dumps into the hollow below it. This winter I have noticed some severe erosion in the side of the holler. I can’t stop the water but I might be able to slow it down. To that end I “built” some spreader dams with some of the plentiful 30-80# rocks my land spits up.

    I think I overdid it and now have a partial tear in my bicep, the one that has already been repaired twice. I didn’t feel anything at the time, but it hurts like hell now. Definitely gonna put a kink in my plans for the next month or so.

  13. 13.

    Ken

    @Gin & Tonic: According to wikipedia, ramps are “commercially exploited in Tennessee”, which sounds like a perfect segue for some political commentary.

  19. 19.

    satby

    @Gin & Tonic: ramps show up at the farmers market here, but like morels, it’s because people hunt them in the woods. I tried transplanting some to see if they would naturalize in my yard behind the garage, but no luck.

  21. 21.

    delphinium

    Those orchids are just lovely!

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, definitely not me :-). I think it was the garden chat that had some other indoor plants and some cool-looking planters in it from a few weeks ago.

    ETA: Yes, I believe it was Glidwrith’s Garden Chat from 4/2

  22. 22.

    MomSense

    Amazing.  I love orchids – can’t keep them alive as my mom is convinced that they need constant watering in their pots. Ugh.

    My son attacked the berm behind the house that was a mess of horrible vines and other delights.  It’s now a big blank hill I need to figure out what to do with. I’m thinking blueberries might work.

    Garden plans have to wait while I finish painting the bathroom. Trim finished yesterday and today the walls.

  23. 23.

    mrmoshpotato

    It’s 38 degrees outside.  I have no garden.  And I’m cozily bundled up in bed.

    Ridiculous weather.

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: ​ I hope so too, but after 2 surgeries, rehabs, and countless rounds of cortisone shots, I’m not gonna hold my breath.

  28. 28.

    Betty Cracker

    My husband is the flora person in the family, but I received a phalaenopsis orchid as a gift several months ago and have managed to keep it alive ever since. The flowers lasted a long time, but once the blooms were gone, I repotted it and cut back the stalks.

    New leaves have popped out of the center, which I assume means the orchid is healthy. It should enjoy the muggy FL summer and hopefully bloom again in the fall.

    On the fauna front, I have a positive update on my formerly warring dogs: We seem to have achieved a sustainable detente! It took the guidance of a DVM behaviorist, a pharmaceutical assist, many months of training, and more patience than I knew I had (and I’ve raised a teen!), but the crisis appears to be over. I’m more relieved than I can possibly express.

  29. 29.

    delphinium

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, I have an unsightly weedy section behind my garage that I plan on covering in plastic over the summer, and then decide next year what to do with it.

    Hope you can get some relief for your arm.

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    I was yakking with a lawn mowing contractor Friday about landscape trees, and how promising varieties often are planted widely and their defects are found later. He described how he planted a row of Leydland Cyprus that grew great until individual ones started turning brown and dying from some blight. So he cut them all down and replaced them with Bradford Pears! Those didn’t die, they just stated falling apart after snow and ice storms.  Now he’s replacing the decrepit ones with Cleveland Pears, which grow more slowly but hold up better.

    Roy was excited about a source he had found for Chinquapin trees.. He learned to like chinquapin nuts as a boy, but now they have disappeared in Central Virginia. A forester told him they were not coming back. It’s a scrubby tree not unlike a hazel nut.

    Last month Roy and his wife visited the Maple Syrup festival in Highland County, and he found a vendor selling chinquapin seedlings grown in his West Virginia nursery. Roy plans to pick some up at the fall Festival. He may have to pick a cool spot to plant them, though. It could be that the warming climate resulted in the tree’s local decline.

  34. 34.

    CCL

    Beautiful orchids. Simply gorgeous photos. My partner has success keeping orchids alive and getting them to rebloom. I help by promising never to touch them.

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    ETA:. Hope the shoulder surprises you and turns out to be a  minor, rest a couple days, affliction.

    A number of my seeds failed to germinate this year and I previously saw that both you and was it Satby(?) noted the same problem. I usually use Miracle Grow’s seed starter. A friend mentioned that Miracle Grow changed to pre -moistening it. I wonder if they also tinkered with it, resulting in too rich a mix. I took what I had left, let it dry out a bit, and mixed it with cactus potting soil.That has worked better. But I am going to have to buy some verbena bonarieus plants…hoping that I have enough natural reseeding in the garden to fill in.

    My direct seed peas in the veg garden are up.

    And we are finally getting rain.

  36. 36.

    Gvg

    I need to get out in the garden before it gets hot. I also need to go buy a new blower vac. Mine finally blew up after 20 plus years and I. We’d to mulch some more leaves down. We are in the long spring drought and the shady side of the yard has such a thick mat of leaves that water can’t get through to my plants. They need those leaf nutrients but a little help with breaking into smaller pieces will make for a better garden. Partly it’s my house roof shedding most of the leaves downhill plus the ones that fall in the street get blown back into the yard so that 1/4 of the yard just gets a lot of leaves. Better soil if I take the trouble to help with a little spring mulching.

    if I had felt healthier this winter I would have done it then when most things died back. Easier. But I just didn’t feel good for months. I usually go around snitching the bags of leaves other people throw away for my sunny beds soil improvement. Florida soil is sandy and needs help. Always add organic matter and everything will grow better.

    Wednesday has a predicted 90% chance of rain. I hope we get a lot.

  37. 37.

    Anne Laurie

    @Betty Cracker: On the fauna front, I have a positive update on my formerly warring dogs: We seem to have achieved a sustainable detente! It took the guidance of a DVM behaviorist, a pharmaceutical assist, many months of training, and more patience than I knew I had (and I’ve raised a teen!), but the crisis appears to be over. I’m more relieved than I can possibly express.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    I have been on the sidelines of such battles, and can attest that you must be both extremely determined, patient, and lucky!

  38. 38.

    TerryC

    Two of the domestic pear trees that I planted 9 years ago on Bratsholme Farm are producing fruit this year for the first time. My native apricots have already passed their bloom and I have my fingers crossed I get fruit there this year. My biggest pawpaw has about 24 flowers this year, its first, but I don’t think we have any nearby pollination sources for it yet.

    Grafting Frankentrees this year. Did all my plums too early I think but the pear and apple grafts are looking good.

    Today we will be planting Norway Spruce and Nuttall Oak. Next week we have another couple hundred trees coming from the county conservation district. That will bring our total of trees planted on my private disc golf courses in the 10 years since my retirement to 15,500+!

  39. 39.

    narya

    @satby: @Gin & Tonic: It’s not clear to me whether they’ve been cultivated in some way. I’ve been a member of this CSA for more than 10 years, and they’ve evolved–now, instead of trying to grow everything themselves, they work with local(ish) farmers whose growing practices are organic or organic-adjacent; I think the ramps are from one of the other places. That cooperative model has actually been pretty great–much better variety (turnips and radishes, I’m glaring at you), and I see most of the partner farmers (from Michigan and Illinois, I think) in local markets.

  42. 42.

    O. Felix Culpa

    I’m back from walking across Portugal and Spain (the Portuguese Camino) and thinking–from the comfort of my armchair–about getting a few seeds started. I’m also considering hiring a consultant to help me spruce up our xeriscaped garden, without investing too much money or labor. (Hah! illusions never die.) I’ll probably do mostly container plants this year, both decorative and edible. Baby steps.

    ETA: Congrats Betty on your canine success!

  48. 48.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker:  Yay for the pooches and the Crackers!!

    For years I’ve had an orchid in a south window that seems to be doing fine, but hasn’t bloomed again in ages.  I did some checking around just now and a place on the web says that orchids like to be fertilized every other watering, don’t like wet feet, like bright indirect light, and like at least a 10 F temperature change every day to rebloom.  The fertilizing is easy.  I’ll have to see what I can do about the temperature change (maybe it will go outside for a while, if I can find a way to keep the squirrels out of the pot).

    I assume this orchid post is part 2 of Glidwrith’s previous post from April 2?

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  49. 49.

    J R in WV

    @Planetjanet: ​
     

    @satby: I picked up some ramps at a farmer’s market last week on a lark. How do you like to eat them?

    Fried with bacon and potatoes. delish !!!

  55. 55.

    Miss Bianca

    Nuffink going on in my garden, but I am suffering severe orchid envy at this point.

    I can totally see how people become obsessed with them.

  58. 58.

    kalakal

    @Betty Cracker: Great news about the pooches! What a relief for you.

    Yep, Orchids love Fl summers, I only bring ’em in in winter if the forecast is for near zero ( rare round here) .

    Here’s a neat trick to watering orchids

    Ice Cubes & Orchids

    It does work.

  60. 60.

    Glidwrith

    @Baud: Me, me, me! Anne Laurie was kind enough to post the first set. I assumed the other pictures were considered too low quality for a post.

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