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.

I took a short trip to Honolulu earlier this month. I saw a few wonderful places and some great plants. The photos are below.

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We went up to Tonasket for a few days starting November 23rd. Here are some photos I took of the area.

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I joined the Pacific Bulb Society, which I’ve found to be an excellent organization with extraordinarily knowledgable growers and scientists and a robust web gallery and wiki page. Find their home page HERE.

One of the perks of being a member is that other members donate seeds and bulbs from their plants and then the organization offers them up for a nominal fee. I sent a long wish list when the last offer was published. It is probably just as well that only three packets of seeds were sent. I’m very excited about these species, though:

Tulbaghia violacea–I had seen these around all over and they seem fragile, somehow; but I saw a well-grown pot of them on Bainbridge Island last year and then saw another nice one when we visited Arliss and Mike in Arizona. If I can get these seeds to grow I’ll put some around the garden and in patio pots, and possibly send some to plant sales or down to Arliss and Mike.

Tropaeolum brachyceras–I want to try this vine to grow up the Pod sculpture Leon has in the driveway bed. If I have extras, I’ll put a few around the garden and then send some off to plant sales.

Cyclamen graecum –if I can get these to grow, I’ll grow one or two in pots in the greenhouse and the rest out in the garden. It is pretty amazing how big the tubers can get!

I will try two different methods with these seeds. I’m soaking half of each type in water now and I’ll plant them tomorrow in the window on heat with LED lights. The rest of the seeds will go into a little moist soil in plastic bags in the refrigerator and I’ll start them in the spring.

Along with a re-emergence of my seed addiction, there has been a bulb relapse incident. After getting all the bulbs from John Scheepers planted I felt like there weren’t enough bulbs for the pots I have ready, so I looked online and found another vendor and ordered more tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, iris, and more. I’m a little worried they won’t be top-notch bulbs this late in the season, but we’ll see when they show up.

I went up to Camano Island last weekend to Karla Matzke’s gallery and sculpture garden. I wandered around the garden and got the following photos of some nice plants Karla has in the borders around the garden.

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Brother Tim came over today and we planted all the spring bulbs that arrived this week from John Scheepers. I highly recommend this bulb retailer–I’ve never been disappointed with their bulbs. All of the below photos were borrowed from their website. Hopefully, I’ll have my own photos come spring to share here.

I planted the below bulbs into the easternmost edge of the memory garden. It was over 200 bulbs–and only planted a small area with no leftovers for pots/forcing. I’m going to have to order some clearance bulbs for my pots.

Here are some photos of the process.

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My brother and sister were kind enough to help out in the garden last weekend. We pruned some roses, trimmed back the dame’s rockets, raked, shredded and mulched with some leaves, and mowed the lawn!

I had spent time loading all the pots into the greenhouse the day before which worked out perfectly since we had two nights below freezing last week. The greenhouse is stuffed really full. I’ve committed to organizing it better next year so there is more room for clivias under the shelving, which will leave a lot more room for a path in the cold months and a functioning workstation for potting and checking things out.

Today, I cleaned the orchard garden up a bit, pruning back some roses and berry canes. I noticed that the old camellia shrub along the fenceline has tripled in size in the last few years and is stretching out into the main garden and towards the street, as well. My Felco pruners clipped back a bunch of it but there is a LOT more to prune to get it back to a comfortable size. I’ll tackle some more of it tomorrow.

My other project today was to clean up the potting bench area. I emptied a bunch of pots with soil left after the resident plants had moved on to their next lives. Then I took the time to organize all the empty pots, stacking them by size. For the clay pots, I put some soil in them in preparation for the bulb delivery slated for Monday or Tuesday next week. There are a few more things I can do to straighten up the area, but it already looks better than it has for years! More work tomorrow will include sawing down the bitter cherry suckers that have sprung up all over the yard.

Lastly, I wandered around the yard to see what dared to be blooming in early November. The witch hazel that I have near the street in front of the orchard bed is in full bloom. This is the shrub that grew up from below the graft of the cultivar I had originally purchased. IT so graceful and actually very beautiful when it is in bloom, so I’m glad I’ve never cut it back.

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There were a few items blooming that I didn’t get decent photos of: two kinds of salvia are blooming in the memory garden, along with a few of the catmints. The asters just a very few flowers left on them, but they have some great seed heads that I hope the birds take advantage of.