A newer species is featured as the Day 13 plant. It is Hakea drupracea, an Australian native shrub that I started from seed just last year. The plants are struggling in the winter greenhouse–there was a period when the Vornado fan wasn’t on and they developed some botrytis mold, but they are recovering now that the circulation is better. Here is what they look like today:

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I like the way these little shrubs are growing. You can see the newest leaves are almost like needles. Below is a sequence showing their progress in about a year.

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Plans for these plants in 2020 include potting them up into larger pots early in the spring and moving them outside for the spring/summer/fall seasons. I’m not sure how long it will take these plants to bloom, but I look forward to their interesting, fragrant white flowers.

My Day 12 plant is a survivor. I ordered it from eBay from my favorite seller Strange Wonderful Things. It is a bulb of Brusvigia grandiflora that I’ve had for about eight years. I think this bulb wants a lot more sunshine than I’ve ever been able to give it in the greenhouse, so it leafs out a bit and then goes dormant, but doesn’t really seem to thrive.

Here are some pics of what it looks like right now, just some strap-shaped leaves:

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The flowers on these plants can be amazing, so I plan to take better care of it in 2020. I’ll top dress it and set it out in a sunny spot for spring/summer/fall. Maybe that will make the difference.

Another orchid finds its way to star on Day 11. This one is Pleione formosana. I received the original bulb eight or so years ago from an eBay seller. It has grown well and reproduced consistently so now I have dozens of Pleione plants. Here is what my main pot looks like now:

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The old bulbs get two offsets every year after flowering, so that is a nice return. On top of that, though, little wispy leafy stems appear in the fall and at their base are bulblets. Dozens of these little starters appear in the pot every year. I pot them all up and grow them on. It takes two or three years for them to get to blooming size.

I take these plants for granted because they are so easy, but when you see the huge, glorious flowers they produce every spring–that’s when I remember to appreciate them. Below are the many ways I’ve appreciated them with the camera over the last few years.

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The leaves are also impressive.

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The plan with these plants in 2020 is to keep them growing and keep propagating them so I can sell some of the offspring at plant sales and try to grow some outside in the garden.

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.