Tough Oncidium Orchids
A humble plant grower and librarian, who wishes to remain anonymous, has the most floriferous orchid I have ever seen. There must be a hundred flowers adorning the single potted plant she has placed ...
Category Archives: Orchids
Masdevallia Orchids
From the mountainous fog forests of Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica comes a group of orchids known as the Masdevallias. Although these plants grow near the equator, the temperatures they experience are...
Pink Rock Orchids & Stellar Geraniums
While horticulture, in its purest sense, is a celebration of our ability to manipulate the environment to the extent that we can grow any plant anywhere — yes, you can grow oranges at the North Pole,...
Chinese Ground Orchids are Tough
Last week I wrote about orchids doing best when grown in containers, that confinement does them good. Well, wouldn’t you know it? Just a few days after writing those words I saw a plant I had n...
From Chicken Ranch to Orchid Hothouses
Alfred Hockenmaier is one of those rare Valley souls who, although middle aged, lives in the same house in which both his father and his great uncle resided before him. That’s right. A third generati...
Vanilla: Rare Edible Orchid
I received a vanilla cutting and a coconut palm as gifts. I have potted the vanilla in sphagnum moss in a plastic pot and tied it to a wooden post. I have placed the plant beside a wall facing north....
Moth Orchids
My rabbi often assures me that there is a reason for everything, that there is really no such thing as an accident, that life only presents us with trials and tests that we are meant to pass, and tha...
Orchids are Tougher than You Think
Recently, Stewart Orchids, a wholesale grower in Carpinteria, sent a shipment of orchids to England. The shipment was lost in transit and bounced between continents for several months until it finall...
