Easy orchids

Orchids are difficult to grow ... right? Wrong! Some orchids are so easy to grow they barely need any help from me to do their thing. Just a bit of water, an occasional feed of liquid orchid food, and a sheltered spot that gets a bit of sun, but not too much. Mine are nestled up against a side fence, so they get no afternoon sun at all.

And they're flowering now. In preparing to write this little blog posting about my native orchids, I discovered a couple of things I didn't know previously. The first is that they are both closely related, even though one is a tiny little guy with flowers less than one inch wide and the other one is big, bold with "can't miss it" sprays of many yellow blooms. They're both dendrobiums.

This one pictured above is the little person, formal name of Dendrobium kingianum, common name of native rock orchid. Small but perfectly formed ...

And this big yellow personality is Dendrobium speciosum, with a few common names, including rock lily and Sydney rock orchid. But I think of it as the Sydney Mardi Gras orchid.

This is the first time the big yellow orchid has flowered, even though it's been in our garden for the last three years. Now, if I had done my research more thoroughly back then, I would have learned that if you buy a young plant then you are going to have to wait a few years for it to flower. For a while I wondered if I was doing anything wrong, as each year the little rock orchids flowered their heads off and the much bigger plant did nothing. It looked healthy enough, but it just didn't produce flowers. This year was its big debut, and what a spectacular entrance it has made.

I have several pots of the smaller rock orchids, including this white one, and they flower very reliably every year. Two years ago I repotted them all, as they were multiplying quite prolifically and getting overcrowded, and all the transplants have survived the experience.

So, what's the second thing I discovered about these orchids? Well, it seems that these are regarded as two of the easiest native orchids you can grow. Perfect beginner's orchids. And that explains a lot!

I think both forms look wonderful, and the fact they are hardy and do well even in the care of an absolute beginner makes them even more marvellous in my eyes.

Now, I should give credit where credit is due, and mention two Australian websites which are a good source of information on native orchids. One is this page on Angus Stewart's website, and this page at the Australian Orchid Nursery website, which is all about Dendrobium speciosum.

If you are looking for something to grow in a line along a fairly boring fenceline on the western side of your garden, then give orchids a try. Contrary to popular belief, many orchids are not difficult to grow at all. In fact they are remarkably tough, easy-care potted plants. As well as these native dendrobiums, look out for the cymbidium orchids, another excellent choice for beginners.

Buy your orchids already potted up and they should do well in that original pot for the first few years at least. Your local garden centre or major hardware chain will stock special orchid foods. I use a liquid feed that I mix up with water and apply from a can, but there are dry granules which you mix up with water, and slow-release pellets which you scatter around every few months. I find the liquid feed easiest, and I feed my plants whenever I remember to do it. I guess that's about once a month.

All the other stuff about them special potting mixes, etc is true, but it mostly has the effect of making people think orchid growing is difficult. It's not. Just buy a plant already potted up, plonk it in a good spot and you're nine-tenths on your way to success.

Good luck!

Native beauty

As a gardener I do find it mildly hilarious that our florist shops, when they send out a bunch of "native" flowers, often don't include a single Australian native bloom in their beautifully arranged displays. Poor things, their lovely bunches of proteas, leptospermums and other South African belles do resemble their Australian native cousins, but their idea of what constitutes a "native" flower isn't one of floristry's strong points. You do occasionally see the odd Aussie kangaroo paw in there, maybe a banksia or two, but usually the "native" flower bunches created by our florists are not especially Australian.

If you think that's bad, imagine if someone asked for "natives" and they sent orchids! Well, ironically enough there's a chance, if the orchids were tiny little things, that they might be Aussie native flowers. But our florists just aren't going to go there anytime soon, nor are their customers.

All this, of course, is just my way of introducing you to the fact that our Australian native orchids are blooming right on schedule once more, in early spring. These little gems are as native to Australia as kangaroos, grevilleas, emus and waratahs, although they're not what people think of when you talk about "native flowers", of course.  

Like most amateur backyard orchid dabblers, I don't have a clue
as to what this orchid's name or variety is. I just bought it at
a garden show several years ago, and it has been flowering
and multiplying with a minimum of care since then.

Same deal with this person. Seven years of excellence! To
give you an idea of their size, this one is about an inch wide.

I'm afraid that the plants are starting to get too big
for their pots. The flower show this year isn't
quite as prolific as in previous years. Usually that
 is the signal that it's time to divide and repot
the plants after flowering finishes. I'll do that
later on in spring.

Meanwhile, there's more than just flowers to
admire. There's flower bud towers, too.

And each cultivar has its own flower bud colourings, and some
toss spotty patterns into the mix as well.

The trick with native orchids is that you shouldn't be shy with them. You need to get up close and personal with these tiny blooms. Stop whatever you are doing and spend a few minutes utterly devoted to the simple pleasure of admiring them. They are definitely worth it.

As for growing them, they're just like our cymbidium orchids: tough and easy-care. They get a bit of sunshine each day, but spend most of their day enjoying either some dappled light or bouts of full shade. I feed them with liquid orchid food once a month (or when I remember to...), and give them a drink of water if it has been dry for a week or so. Mostly, Sydney's natural rainfall waters them well for me, as these are all outdoor plants.

If you are an admirer of Australian plants in general but don't have enough sunshine to grow the bigger sun-loving natives, a few pots of these beautiful little native orchids will fit into that semi-shaded spot very nicely indeed and give you something little yet lovely to admire every spring.

Spring started weeks ago!

One of the fortunate things about my new life as an erratically employed freelancer is that I get more time off to do gardening, whether I want the time off or not! The pay is lousy but the lifestyle is terrific. As a result, my garden looks rather tidy at the moment. As the heading for this post says, spring started weeks ago, so this posting is nothing more than a wander around my happy and unusually tidy spring garden. 

For me, this light, fresh green is the true colour
of spring. In this case it's the top leaves of my
potted Turkish Brown fig.

Flowers do announce the new season nicely, and our potted native
orchids are producing sprays of these tiny, fragrant little blooms.

Small but perfectly formed orchids less than an inch across
from side to side, the other nice thing about them, speaking
as a gardener, is that they are very easy to grow.

Our two lavender bushes have been blooming
their heads off for a month, the bees love them
and they aren't looking like slowing down any
time soon. I've added its fellow Mediterranean
classic, the rosemary, to keep them company.

Wet weather can truncate the show of the superb
scadoxus, but with hardly a drop for the last few
weeks they're putting on their best show ever.

Our self-sown strawberry patch (which came
up out of some compost spread in this spot) is
still rudely healthy. Its spot is a bit too shady
in winter so it's content to snooze then, but now
the amount of sunshine it's getting is growing
daily it is flowering (with liquid feeds from me
to help the cause) and the first fruits are forming.

The end of winter is one of the two times of the
year when my in-ground citrus are fed, and a
week ago our garden was resplendent with the
heady aroma of chicken poo. Now the Eureka
lemon is flowering its head off quite fragrantly. 

Our potted Thai lime is clapping on a lot of
deep maroon new growth, but as it's in a pot I
feed it lightly once a month, unlike the other
citrus trees growing here.

I sometimes channel a bit of Basil Fawlty when
I am yet again caring for my potted mint, as
what mint needs "is a damned good thrashing".
What I mean by that is mint needs constant
taming and cutting back, sometimes all the way
down to pot-rim level. I did that for the
umpteenth time about three weeks ago, and
since then with regular watering and liquid
feeds, it has bounced back nicely yet again.
It's a high-maintenance herb, mint, but it
does look and smell lovely in these peak times.

I'm not going to say too much about the passionfruit vine
trained on my neighbour's garage wall, other than to report
that it's ludicrously lush and green, and has no flowers and
is doing sod-all in the way of producing fruit yet.

The small gaggle of garlic plants raised from
sprouted supermarket cloves is growing on well.

I told you the garden looks neat and well mulched at the moment.
I pulled out the winter crop, dug it all over as usual, then planted
seedlings of lettuce, basil and chillies, along with pretty little French
 marigolds for some colour. The round bare patch on the right
rear is where I am raising Collard greens direct-sown from seeds.
The Collard greens came with the Soulicious eBook cookbook 
Pam and I bought from our friend Awia Markey.

New plants have been added recently, too.
This row of four Gardenia magnifica should
grow to about 2m tall and cover up that
white Colorbond fence. I am hoping for dense
glossy green growth, white fragrant flowers
in summer and no problems, please!

And finally, if it all grows too big and everything
gets out of hand – start again! That's what we
are doing with a potted bay tree. Our last one
was here for ages but grew too big, then became
pot-bound then got sick and ugly. All my fault.
So here is "Son of Bay", my attempt to make
amends for all my bay-tree growing mistakes
perpetrated over the last 20 years. Whether I find
redemption or not remains to be seen, but I do
like adding just a touch of epic theme to
gardening here. It puts things in perspective.

Creche expectations

Venturing out into the garden every morning during spring with my little camera in my pocket feels like I am gathering the news, except that I'm mostly a reporter for the new births department of the local Daily Star. And so here's this morning's news from our backyard creche.

The NSW Christmas Bush family are proud to
announce the arrival of their first open bloom, the
first of several hundred to follow. They have every 
expectation that their little pale babies will in due course
turn into many bracts (not brats) in festive pink.
Tip: click on the first photo above and it should 
(hopefully) turn into a clickable slideshow of all the
other photos (although I don't think this will work
in the emailed version of this blog, sorry!).

Our visitors from Louisiana say they just love it here
in Sydney and their new daughter, Iris, promises
to be a resplendent blue Southern Belle very soon. 

This feisty little Australian native orchid, though it's
no bigger than a five-cent piece, would like everyone
to know that it is a fully formed adult, thanks very much. 

Poking its head out amongst the figs and orchids
to see what's happening, this little bromeliad bloom
from the South American rainforests is looking 
forward to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016. 

And though rather hairy legged and bald at the moment
this baby Roma tomato will soon be growing rapidly 
on a steady diet of water and healthy organic feeding. 

Quite honestly, I simply couldn't decide which photo
of our young Roma tomato I liked the most, so I
decided to include both of them, because I can.   

Spring really is a wonderful time of year to be in a garden with a little camera in your back pocket to capture what's going on. There's lots happening!

Adding to the collection(s)

The chances of Pam and me not buying anything at this year's Florafest flower and garden show at Kariong, near Gosford on the NSW Central Coast, were precisely zero. And so it came to pass that we have come home with some new babies to add to our plant collections. Considering the temptations on offer, we were very restrained I think. I bought one new plant, Pam bought five, but she has better taste than me.

They aren't very big, all tucking in behind the driver's seat on the way home. Two new little native orchids that will always be little native orchids. One little native orchid that could well grow into a monster rock orchid, if I play my cards right. Two new succulents for Succulent City. And one new bromeliad to increase that little collection. All very restrained. No trees, no shrubs, not even a bushy perennial or a food plant.

This is the little native orchid collection at the moment; only five pots and two in flower, the third about to flower and the others just babies.

This is one of the existing native orchids, in bloom now and with a delicious sweet scent as a bonus.

Our new additions are also scented, but the colours are white and a paler pink, different flower forms, too; good choices by Pam.

This might be the smallest of the three plants, but it has the potential to grow very large indeed over the next 10 years. It's a Dendrobium orchid, a native plant usually found near bushland streams and creeks. It produces long, spectacular sprays of many small golden or yellow orchids, each spray about 30cm (1 foot) or more in length. That's not going to happen soon, but with some good care over the next few years it's something to look forward to. And the plant label has one of those typically catchy orchid botanical names of Dendrobium speciosum var. grandiflora 'Mt Larcom Gold' x D. speciosum var. speciosum 'Windermere'. At Florafest, the sign said Dendrobium 'Gold' and that's what I'm sticking with.

Pam chose this bromeliad, with the odd name of 'Guz Belinda', to brighten up our brom collection, which so far has only three inmates, which definitely need some new, interesting company.

Always one with an eye for the weirdos when down at the succulent stands, Pammy couldn't resist this Euphorbia caput medusa (ie, 'head of Medusa', that snake-headed lady from Ancient Greek Mythology).

I am sure that the first photos sent back in 2455 from space explorers who were the first to discover forests on other planets will look like this. This is how Planet Zorg probably looks.

And if you think the Medusa head Euphorbia is weird, check out this one, which I think is a very peculiar type of Echeveria. I already have a short, squat Echeveria which looks like this thing. Oddly enough for a large garden show, where the expert stands are everywhere, the plant label just says 'succulent'. You'd think they'd screen the exhibitors at the gate and reject the fools which don't even know what they're selling, but with succulents maybe it's a case that hardly anyone actually knows what this is.

Hovering overhead in their spaceship on Planet Zorg, the explorers noticed an outcrop of what looked like a strange succulent plant, but when it scuttled away into the nearby forest they realised the alien inhabitants were very different from the Earthlings in the spaceship overhead.

The great thing about attending one of those big flower and garden shows is the chance to buy plants which no garden centre is likely to stock. (Modern garden centres are so incredibly limited in their plant ranges).

I can't say that all the specialists at Florafest and other shows offer bargains. In fact when you go price-comparison shopping, you soon realise that rip-offs and bargains are out there in equal numbers. It pays to do a good lap of any show before making your first purchase, or you could end up seeing a price tag of $4 on something, having already paid $12 for the identical item which you're carrying around. Really ruins a day's shopping, that does!

It's great fun going to a gardening show, though. I had a good day there working on the Burke's Backyard stand doing very little of any use for the cause as it turns out, but it was nice to talk to a wide variety of readers and to refresh my appreciation of what a huge, diverse bunch of people love gardening.

Little miracles

A few blog postings ago I mentioned that there are several plants in this garden which are very much Pam's, and here is another one.

It's her air plant, a tillandsia, and unlike the various other 'Pam' plants here, this one really is hers in every sense. I am not allowed to touch it. I can talk to it, but it's Pam's job to mist it with water regularly. And look how happy the little person is! Pam's tillandsia is in beautiful bloom at the moment. The flowers are quite tiny, just half an inch or so in length. But what a lovely colour they are.

Pam has always loved tiny flowers, and she's the reason we have native orchids in our garden, too. This tillandsia bloom won't last long in the garden, but its short stay is imprinted in our memory, and we'll look out for it next year. I love it when Pam bustles into my office and says "get out the camera, my tillandsia is looking great. It won't last long." And it's not the only flowering tillandsia we have, either. In November, we should see the other one do its thing...

And what a tiny little thing it does! Some readers will know of the plant known as Spanish moss or Old Man's Beard, a trailing tangle of fine strands. Well, it flowers too, and these minuscule blooms appear later on in spring, around November.

The first time I came across these blooms I didn't actually notice them on the plant, they are so tiny. I detected them as little green dots on a photo I had taken. So I went outside, had a very close-up look and found these itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny little flowers. Now we're on the lookout for them every year.

As I mentioned earlier, it's Pam who is responsible for adding various native orchids to our garden, although these are my responsibility when it comes to feeding, watering and care. They are sending up their flower stalks now and should be in bloom in about a month from now, sometime in September I guess. This lovely little bloom is half an inch wide, from wingtip to wingtip, and it has a sweet scent, too.

Pam is forever teaching me all sorts of things in her own quiet, persistent way, and out in the garden a love of tiny flowers is definitely one of the most important and valuable things I have learned from her. In fact it isn't just tiny flowers which I now love and appreciate, it's all tiny things as well. If you bother to stop and look, there is just so much happening in each and every square inch out there, and much of it is both fascinating and beautiful.

Orchids large and small

I sometimes wonder where plants get their reputations from, especially when that reputation is not remotely close to my experience of them. Take orchids for example. Lots of people seem think of them as being gorgeous but tricky-to-grow plants. Well, if I knew nothing of their reputation and was asked to describe them after growing them for the last 18 years, I'd say they're tough as old boots, indestructible, trouble-free. The only part of their 'reputation' that I'd agree with is that yes, they are gorgeous.

Right now there are two very different types of orchids blooming in my garden. One is large and lovely, and the other is a tiny, dainty little native orchid, and I'm excited because it's the first time my native orchid has bloomed for me.

This is the big one in bloom, a common cymbidium orchid. These make the most extraordinary cut flowers for vases indoors, where they last for several weeks. Pammy swoops on my orchid pots, secateurs in hand, ready to cut off whole branches of blooms, as soon as she sees them unfolding. I always have to make sure that she leaves enough behind to decorate my outdoor room, too!

As well as this white/pink one, which blooms in September, there's a maroon-brown one which blooms earlier in winter, around June. Both of my orchids came into my garden as potted gifts, and since then each plant has thrived and been divided every few years, and now I have about five pots of each. Picking the ideal growing spot for them was easy. The previous owner of our house, Angela, also grew cymbidium orchids (which were lovely), so all I did was put my orchids in the same spot where Angela grew hers. For the record, it's in brightly lit shade against a side fence, but oddly enough this spot does get an hour or so of direct overhead sunshine every day of the year. I've been told a bit of direct sunshine is good for orchids, and so it has proved. The plants are grown in pots, in orchid potting mix and they're fed monthly with orchid plant food, applied via a watering can. That's it.

While I'm pleased to see our cymbidiums in bloom again, I've become a bit complacent about their trouble-free reliability. Pictured above is something that's genuinely exciting. It's our first-ever native orchid bloom. It's tiny, just 2cm (3/4 inch) across from wingtip to wingtip. By comparison, the cymbidiums measure 9cm (3.5 inches) across. But it's dainty, pretty and, as they say about babies, small but perfectly formed.

To take a few photos I dragged the native orchid pot from its usual spot in orchid land, plonking it on a chair on the pathway. As you can see it's not exactly covered in blooms, but as these are the first blooms we're not bothered by that. Unfortunately we don't know its botanical name (correction! now I do – it's a Dendrobium orchid). Pam bought it at the annual Marrickville Community Street Fair one year, where they close off the main road and set up music stages, food stalls and well-organised mayhem for a happy, multi-cultural community day of celebration. We're not even sure how long ago Pammy bought the orchid, but it's probably three or four years ago. I think one of the reasons it hasn't flowered is simple – I hadn't fed it enough. The general rule with Aussie native plants is that over-feeding can kill them, and feeding them the wrong stuff can kill them, too. So I was timid. Then one day I asked our resident horticultural guru, Geoffrey, about feeding them and learned that the orchid food I feed the cymbidiums is fine for our native orchids, too. Bingo! Flowers in the first year. Thank you once again, Geoffrey.

In the process of moving the pot out for photography a few bits just fell out. As they had roots attached and as I've learned that you should never give up on orchids, I've potted them up.

Hardly the most impressive sight but it's a beginning. I always have a bag of orchid potting mix on hand, as I also use orchid mix when repotting bromeliads (a job which I plan to do very soon and blog about). In nature, orchids don't even grow in soil – they're ephiphytes which grow on rocks, in the crotches between tree trunks and branches, etc. In pots, all they need is a very, very free-draining medium to hold them upright and provide somewhere for roots to go. My orchid potting mix is mostly chunky bark bits.

There are several other native orchid blooms yet to make an appearance, and hopefully next year there'll be even more. This plant had been growing and getting bigger over the last few years, but it just wasn't flowering. While it was almost certainly the feeding which promoted the flowers, there's a chance that it also didn't start flowering until its roots filled the pots. I'm not sure how true this is, but I have heard several people say that orchids bloom better when they're crowded in their pots. So, I have a simple plan for this one. Leave it alone! It will keep on getting its monthly dose of liquid food, but that's it.

Maybe this last comment is only really relevant to people in mild, temperate climates such as mine, but if you have a garden which gets only a bit of sunshine during the day, cymbidium orchids are something well worth trying. They are tough plants, and they flower so spectacularly and for such a long time. As cut blooms indoors it's really special to be able to say "yes" when visitors ask – "did you grow these?"

Cymbidiums are a perfect fit for so many inner-city backyards. They're the easiest and least fussy of the orchids and the colour range is enormous. And finding a good one is easy. Just buy one you like when it's in bloom.