When special people give you special plants, the plants become incredibly important to me. This is true for all the plants I’ve gotten from my brother and sister. It is also very true for a Cymbidium orchid Leon and I received many years ago from Karl and Sally Hufbauer. Karl is a kind, sweet man and an amazing artist (See his work HERE) and while it has been years since I’ve seen Karl and Sally, I love that this amazing orchid reminds me of them every year.

Here is the plant as it looks today in the very crowded greenhouse:

This is the only full-sized Cymbidium that I have–the others are all much smaller. But this monster is worth the enormous space it demands. Below is a gallery of flower pics over various years.

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My 2020 plans for this plant are to split it into three divisions and pot them all up in new bark and moss with some nutrients thrown in. I don’t see any flower spikes yet, which is surprising.

Day 10 focuses on not one plant, but a bunch of them, an entire nuclear family, in fact. Here is the pot I photographed this morning:

This is a pot of a couple of dozen seedlings taken from pods of the Hippeastrum hybrid that I’ve had for maybe ten years. Of all the Hippeastrum bulbs I’ve had over the years, this is by far the most robust. It blooms well and offsets readily, and also sets myriad seed.

Here are the flowers:

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For 2020, the baby bulbs will get potted individually and the older parent bulbs will get top dressed with a rich mix of new soil and organic fertilizer.

I struggle with jungle cactus in the greenhouse. I can get them to grow and survive but they never seem to look as good as similar plants I’ve seen in offices and homes. My Day 8 plant is a jungle cactus (maybe a Schlumbera x bucklei hybrid) that I inherited when some neighbors moved to the east coast and left some plants behind. It just appeared one day around the time they left–I’m guessing maybe seven years ago. It is a good, well-established plant and it has rewarded me with some lovely blooms several times. This year, though, it doesn’t have many buds and seems unhappy with its wintering-over spot in the greenhouse.

In past years, though, it has looked like this:

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My plans for this plant in 2020 include repotting it into fresh soil/bark mix and fertilizing it regularly so I’ll get a more robust show of flowers in March of 2021!

2024 Update–this plant never did bloom and died the year following this entry. I think it dried out, ultimately, as I moved it to a pot with moss on a greenhouse shelf and just left it over the winter. My other orchids survived just fine, but this one gave up. 6.23.24

Another long-term resident of the greenhouse is our day seven plant. This is an orchid that I ordered from an online source probably seven or more years ago. When I got it, it maybe had seven small leaves and a few air roots. As you can see from the second photo, the name has disappeared. I think this is Neofinetia falcata, but I’m not sure. It has never bloomed. It keeps growing, but also seems to possibly have a virus, so maybe that is keeping it from blooming.

My 2020 goals for this plant are to give it liquid orchid fertilizer and coax it to a healthier state and to bloom.

2024 Update — Another fun update, as this plant is now in full bloom in the greenhouse and seems to be happy. It has two stalks this year, both with flowers. I love how it blooms over a long period. I am hoping for seeds this year with all the flowers and it seems likely it will get pollinated. The tuber is about 4″ across now and I worry that rats or slugs will eat out the growth tips and leave me without one of these special caudiciform plants. 6.23.24

The concept of “volunteers” in the garden is a common, well-known one. This is when plants reseed themselves around and sometimes you like it and sometimes not (usually, I like it a lot). I never expected it in the greenhouse, though, but volunteerism there has provided some wonderful surprises.

Our day six plant is a very surprising volunteer–it is Sinningia leucotricha. This seedling is now about five years old. Its appearance was timely. I had a mother plant, one I had purchased at City People’s and kept alive and happy-ish for about ten years. The bulb grew and grew and the plant’s leaves got bigger and bigger as did its caudex and it bloomed every year. It went dormant in the winter and then leafed out and bloomed in the spring. But one year it didn’t bother to wake up. The bulk seemed solid, still, so I hung on to it, but it had passed on to the Gesneriad patch in the sky.

Around that time, I was cleaning up all the pots in the greenhouse and thankfully noticed a very tiny seedling with a tiny bulb on it. I was extremely surprised because I never noticed the parent plant going to seed and Sinningia seeds are notoriously tiny. But somehow, there it was. A photo of that plant from 2016 is below.

The plant grew quickly and had a few flowers in September of this year.

Here is the plant as it looks today:

My hope is that I’ll get a few more flowers this year. For care, this plant likes well-drained soil with lots of sand. Repotting seems tricky, so I’ll avoid it until the caudex fills the pot. I’ll fertilize it lightly through the growing season.

Because this plant sowed itself and grew, I felt like I could tackle tiny seeds of the Gesneriad clan and have since started Sinningia speciosa and Chirita tamiana seeds with decent success.

2024 Update — This plant was the victim of a division into three plants. Two of them survived and both are blooming as I type this! I love this simple little orchid. It asks for very little and rewards with several intricate blooms each year. 6.23.24

My day five plant’s diminutive size belies its venerable age. I would guess that I’ve had this little orchid for at least twenty years. It is Restrepia guttulata and it was purchased at Baker and Chantry Orchids in Woodinville long ago when my siblings and I used to visit there regularly.

Here is the plant today:

This plant’s happiness has been elusive at times and occasionally and randomly stumbled upon. I had divided it at one point and had three healthy plants, but two of them passed away in the last year, so I’m left with this seemingly healthy plant.

Below are some photos of the plants in bloom. The flowers are so striking and strange–I just love them!

For care, though I’m obviously no expert, these plants seem to want moisture, but not wet, cool weather and they like to be fed, but not too much at once. I think the two plants died because I fed them too much. And they seem to bloom whenever they feel like it, usually in the spring, but other times too.

2024 Update — the remaining plant after the division was shared with Tim offset a few more times so I split it into three pots this spring. Only one of the bulbs bloomed this year and there were no flowers last year. Likely the offsets will do better in their new soil and pots. 6.23.24

Today’s plant is really two plants. I purchased this Vetheimia bracteata from Sky Nursery about six years ago. I remember it was half-price, so that’s how I felt justified in purchasing it. It is a winter-grower, so it leafs out starting in November and then blooms in early spring. I pulled one of the larger offsets into its own pot several years ago with the intention of sharing it with brother Tim. That offset is finally growing really well and has a flower spike coming this year, so I will pass it on to Tim so he can enjoy the bloom.

These plants seem happy in a mix of 1/2 potting soil, 1/2 coarse sand. I keep them in trays and water from the bottom for most of the year, but they get sprinkled in the summer when I shower all the greenhouse plants. Despite being dormant at that time, they don’t seem to mind. I add fertilizer to the trays so that the water carries it to the roots with every water–just a general organic balanced feed in powder form. Sometimes I also add compost tea bags to the trays.

Below is a photo of the main plant spiking last year.

And here are photos of the plant in bloom from several years back:

For care, it seems like these need to be repotted about every three years and some offset removed, or a much larger pot used to hold them. I have them in clay pots to help ensure drainage doesn’t become a problem. Giving them steady water once they start into growth is important–they don’t need to be moist, but just watered somewhat regularly to support their growth and flowering.

2024 Update — I describe this plant as a giant. Now, it is four smaller Coelogyne plants after an ambitious division last year, one of which is very healthy and blooming. The remaining three are sad and limping along. I will try to get them going again but if they do not improve by the end of summer, they will find the compost pile–they take up too much room! 6.23.24

I’ll highlight a greenhouse veteran for day three–my giant Coelogyne cristata orchid. This plant and I started in a love/hate relationship after I ordered it off of eBay. In one of my houseplant books, an Australian grower had a giant one of these orchids that covered itself with fragrant bloom every year–so that was the dream.

Mine grew and bloomed a bit those first few years, but then got shy. It continued to grow, however. I think I’ve had it for about ten years now. I repotted it into a much larger basket about four years ago and it has continued to grow, but still was shy blooming. I got to the point of listing it for sale, I was so frustrated with it. And then, of course, it bloomed beautifully. And it has continued to do so for several years in a row now.

Here is how the plant looks today:

It is over two feet across and has hundreds of pseudobulbs.

Here is it in bloom–photos from last year and the year before:

Care for this plant is still rather hit-or-miss for me. I keep it in the greenhouse all year. It takes a lot of water to keep the pseudobulbs plump in warm weather. I’m lazy about fertilizing it. I just put handfuls of balanced organized fertilizer into the pot once in the spring and again in the summer.

The most important lesson I’ve learned with this plant is to keep water away from the flowers. They open a pristine, bright white color. Water causes black/brown spots and also causes them to deteriorate much faster than flowers that have been kept dry.

Next plans for this plant are to cut off a few back bulbs and pot them separately to see if they will root and grow. This doesn’t seem to be a common orchid around here, so it could be popular at plant sales.

2024 Update–I gave these seedlings to sister Cate and she kept them going for a year, then passed them back to me when she moved to the Midwest. I moved them to a planter on the patio and a squirrel immediately dug them up and eventually stole them. So, they are no longer, sadly. 6.23.24

I’m posting my plants-a-day ahead so that I don’t get behind! The day two plant is a Cyclamen coum seedling from seeds started in 2018. I wasn’t hopeful that these seeds would germinate at all, and I just put the pot in the greenhouse and ignored it. Then, one day, there was a leaf! That was last January. This year, the plant (which might be more than one plant) looks pretty amazing.

Because of my success with these seeds, I ordered some more cyclamen seeds from the Bulb Society bulb/seed exchange and I received the seeds of Cyclamen graecum, which I will treat the same way and hope for similar results.

Cyclamen do well in the garden here in Seattle, but I may have a tough time letting them loose in the garden. They seem so precious and delicate. Maybe if I end up with a dozen of them some of them will find there way outside.

2024 Update–I believe this cultivar is still alive and a few others of this particular cross have also bloomed and they are all beautiful. My dream of having 50 blooming Clivia plants has yet to materialize. I had about 25 this spring, so halfway there. Many of the plants need to be potted up and moved into better-draining potting mix. I am hoping to get all that done this summer.

The new year and new decade start today! I decided that I would highlight a new plant every day in 2020, and then going forward, I can revisit the same plants and compare them year-over-year.

The first plant I will highlight is a Clivia miniata cultivar–a seedling from a cross called “Quail x Nakamura.” It gets day-one status because it has the audacity to be blooming on New Year’s Day!

Here are some photos of the flower and the plant from this year.

I’ll have to estimate the history of this plant, as I haven’t kept notes on it and my eBay history only goes back so far. I think I bought the seeds about eight years ago. I have several seedlings from this same cross from purchases made from an eBay seller, but the others have yet to bloom. The first flowers appeared two years ago on this plant. It did not bloom in 2019.

Here are some photos of the plant in flower in 2018:

Notes on this plant:

Waiting six years for a seedling to bloom is all worthwhile when the seedling has wonderful, different, interesting flowers like this clone. So many of my clivia seedlings have flowers that aren’t that different from the Clivia miniata type plants–it has been very disappointing.

This plant has about 13 leaves currently. I repotted it after it bloomed in 2018, which is likely why it didn’t bloom in 2019. It has not produced any offsets.

I plan to keep it potbound and am hopeful that will cause it to send up some offsets. It is in a two-gallon pot currently.

The flowers are much more subtly colored this year, possibly due to the lower light from it being winter! The scape has close to 20 flowers this year.

For Clivia care, I’ve found that planting them in 1/2 potting soil and 1/2 fine-to-medium orchid bark is a great mixture. They seem to grow best in medium, indirect light. I put organic food on top of the pot once in spring and again in summer. All of the adult plants are put out under the Douglas fir tree starting in April or May. I clean the pots up when I move them out and shred any dead leaves or flower stems onto the top of the potting soil. Repotting takes place at this time, too. Ideally, the Clivias all end up in two- or three-gallon pots.

The Clivias are watered regularly throughout the spring/summer/fall. I start watching temperatures in October. They can take temps down to frost, but I usually pull them into the greenhouse when I see the high 30s. I don’t water these plants once they are moved into the greenhouse until February or when I see flower spikes.

My Clivia dream is to have about 50 blooming plants lighting up the early spring greenhouse, with dozens of different cultivars in various colors and shapes. I have enough plants to make this dream come true–but giving them the right amount of attention to get them all to bloom has eluded me thus far. Some of the seedlings are just getting to blooming age now, so maybe 2020 will be a good Clivia year.