Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Plants, plants, plants!

After my Nana died, we split up a lot of her plants.  Man, she had like, a million plants.  She especially loved orchids.  Now, I have 1 parsley aralia, 2 regular orchids, and 1 hanging orchid.  I brought the parsley aralia and one of the orchids up to my apartment with me when I moved, but I left the other 2 orchids at my parent's house.  The last time I was there, I noticed that they were NOT happy, so I brought them up with me!  Today I repotted one, and I tended to the other one...

First, here are some pictures of my lovely, lovely orchid blossoms!



Aren't they pretty!  You can see the buds in the background, but here's a close up of what they look like:

Grainy, I know, but my camera refused to focus on them!

Today I repotted (for the first time, ever) the other orchid that I've got.  It suffered some neglect at the other house (getting knocked out of it's pot by a dog, not getting watered regularly, etc) and it did not look pretty.

Before:




That last picture is upside down, but I can't fix it.  Poor thing was falling out of it's little planter, it wouldn't stay in!  So, I got it a bigger one, and some new orchid potting soil!

After:

 In the new, bigger, planter
In it's pot!  It looks happier, I think.

Also, I got a new bucket (the one I bought last week was defective!) to water the hanging orchid in.  Hanging orchids are different, they need to be submerged in water about once a week instead of being watered from above. My new bucket:


It works well!  Before I watered my orchid, I trimmed all of the dead pieces off of it, because I didn't see the point of keeping them.  It looked pretty raggedy...

Before:
 After:
This is after I watered it...I let it sit on the tray for a few minutes to catch any excess water that would drip out.

Then, I hung them both up again!


It looks dark in the bathroom, but it's actually not!  It was just raining outside at this point...

Oh, I also bought a spray bottle so I can spray them, so they'll have a bit more humidity.  

I love them, they're so fun!


1 comment:

  1. I'm glad to see that you're taking such good care of Nana's orchids, even rescuing them when they're in distress! One of my Nana orchids, an encyclia, has a flower spike that's starting to split into recognizable buds. I'm really envious of you, Claire, and Aunt Yvette since your plants are so far ahead of mine. I'll send a photo around when it finally blooms.

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