Blog
Oncidium Sharry Baby ‘Sweet Fragrance’
The mighty Sharry Baby, also known as the Chocolate Orchid because of it’s fragrance. Although I still meet people who think orchids don’t have fragrances! This to me was the Oncidium of the late 80’s and all of the 90’s and still extremely popular today just because it smells like chocolate. The fragrance can become quite overpowering in a small space, even in the wide open spaces of a greenhouse you can be overcome by the fragrance. It’s an easy grower and will quickly become a large plant that fills a 250mm...
read moreOdontonia Pacific Paranoia ‘Other Side Of Kool’
Purple, everyone loves purple. Although surprisingly my local orchid society members preferred Oncidium Alosuka ‘Claire’ over Odontonia Pacific Paranoia ‘Other Side Of Kool’ when I took a display plant of each in last year! Apart from that little hiccup I’ve found most prefer purple and it’s a colour that some Oncidium intergenerics do very well. Pacific Paranoia is a hybrid between Miltonia Honolulu and Odontoglossum (old genus name) bictoniensis, which is also a parent to Odontocidium Everglades...
read moreOdontocidium Everglades Elegance ‘Nancy Lee’
This has to be one of my favourite orchids. Nice big fat pseudo bulbs with lime green foliage producing bolt upright spikes carrying 100 plus flowers in a big feather duster like display. Another Oncidium intergeneric that will spot flower almost year round, but does tend to mostly flower from late January to April in our climate. One very appealing aspect of the flower spike is the habit of all the side branches to be upright beside the main stem, giving the overall flower spike this feather duster type of display. This is very different...
read moreOncidium Alosuka ‘Claire’
Big, small, I love them all. Today small is cute and makes a great windowsill or tabletop display in the form of Oncidium Alosuka ‘Claire’ growing nicely in an 80mm pot. As you can see from the photos that’s not a big pot, but boy is it putting on a display. Now just a quick pointer for anyone that has purchased one of our 80mm Alosuka’s, it will most likely grow for another 12 months in that pot before it needs potting up. One of the hardest things to learn about growing your orchids is when not to over pot...
read moreOncidium Sweet Ears ‘Pacific Gold’
One of the amusing things about Oncidium intergeneric orchids is that some come with unusual foliage colours, which throws people who expect just green foliage on their orchids. You can get every shade of green from lime through to the really dark greens, then you get mottled foliage, red foliage, yellow foliage (not a nutrient deficiency), variegated foliage and even purple. One of the red foliaged orchids is Oncidium Sweet Ears ‘Pacific Gold’, but that all depends on how you grow it. As you can see from the photos I have...
read moreVanilla planifolia – January 2015
Sometimes I really wonder how I get talked into doing things! Anyway one of my really nice clients who run a retail nursery asked me to grow a Vanilla Orchid for them so that I could share my experiences, and I suppose curiosity got the better of me. So after having the orchid sitting down in the propagation house for a few months, which it took as an opportunity to really grow, I finally mounted it onto a hardwood post. Now I was scratching my head as to where to put it so that it could really grow well and I came up with the southern...
read moreSouthern Spotted Velvet Gecko
Our house is home to several geckos, most of which are the Southern Spotted Velvet Gecko (Oedura tryoni). Now the one that currently inhabits the living area is known as Tyrell and has quite the personality. During the day he hides in behind the furniture or under the fridge, which is his preferred spot during winter as the condenser keeps it nice and cosy. Occasionally another gecko tries to move in on his territory and that’s when the hissyfits started, and it can quite noisy as they fight it out (or it could be just mating...
read moreOdontioda Taylor Barfield ‘This n That’
Sometimes the orchids that you least expect to do well, surprise you. Generally Odontioda is a mix of cool growing Odontoglossums and cool growing Cochliodas. So when I first grew Odontioda Taylor Barfield I wasn’t expecting such a great result in South East Queensland (subtropical climate), particularly when you consider that it’s half Odontoglossum cirrhosum which gives it that beautiful star shape and distinctive lip. Well if you’ve always had a desire to grow Odontoglossum cirrhosum but couldn’t because you live...
read moreOncidium Alosuka ‘Claire’
Oncidium Alosuka is one of the typical yellow skirt dancing ladies which everyone thinks of when you say Oncidium. Alosuka is a hybrid from what is called the Varicosum group of Oncidiums, or the group that loves its water during the warm months but hates water around its roots during the night or during the cooler months. The Varicosum group make great epiphytes on trees or mounted on tree fern slabs (see photo). During the warm humid months with plenty of rain about these Oncidiums will grow masses of aerial roots over their tree or...
read moreOncidium Heaven Scent ‘Redolence’
Oncidium Heaven Scent is the next generation on from the old favourite Oncidium Sharry Baby, which smells like chocolate. For me what makes Oncidium Heaven Scent a much better plant over its parent Oncidium Sharry Baby is the shorter more compact spike habit and the higher density of flowers. Of the two cultivars I’ve seen of Heaven Scent, I personally prefer the fuller more defined flower of ‘Redolence’. As you can see the flower is a red and white boiled candy humbug type of pattern, which when combined with the wider...
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