Its been a long time since my last update on the orchids!!
There have been a few changes and some new additions which I can share with you in this post.
I’ll get the sad news out of the way first and inform you that one of the miniature orchids, Sandra, died. She was always the weakest of the plants and although she came to us with plenty of blooms she never had many leaves. This seemed to be detrimental to her growth and I always now choose orchids with plenty of leaf growth.
Here she is though at her best, RIP Sandra!
The other miniature orchid, Julie, hasn’t done an awful lot this year and I feared that this one would become a casualty as well! Julie hasn’t flowered this year and the small flower spike she did send out died. The poor growth this year was probably my own fault as I re-potted her into a bigger pot which obviously didn’t suit. In the end I put her back in a smaller pot and up to now she is still surviving but not thriving. Fingers crossed she’ll recover.
The two existing large orchids, Big Ben and Ratana have been amazing this year and are currently in full bloom.
Ratana, which had been a rescue orchid picked up in the Wilkinsons sale has the biggest blooms of all the orchids.
Ratana has produced 4 huge flowers on a very straight flower spike. She is still ‘listing’ in her pot but seems happy enough.
Big Ben is probably my favourite orchid this year. I struggled with the flower spike on this orchid as it initially grew out at an odd angle and I spent a month or so training the spike around to the front of the plant. This has resulted in a low arc of five flowers which looks amazing.
So, to the newbies!
Of course, we needed to replace Sandra with another miniature orchid and managed to pick one up from Ikea. Unfortunately I have no photographs of the plant when it was in bloom and can’t now remember what colour it is! This orchid, which we have called Quinsy, is currently in resting mode and is pictured below with Julie.
We also now have another full size orchid! Again the fault of Wilkinsons as its hard to walk away from a beauty like this when its a fiver! What is more difficult though is finding a space in the house for it.
We have called this orchid Helen and she is a very tall plant with nine flowers.
I hope you enjoyed finding out about the orchids even though we did lose one of them. They are interesting plants to grow and live with!