The SEPOS Orchid Show

Now that I've concluded my posts on my trip to London, I'll do one post on a trip I went to just last week. I was fortunate enough to be able to travel with the University of Minnesota Hockey Pep Band to the NCAA Frozen Four in Philadelphia. For this of you who aren't hockey people, this is the end to the National Championship Tournament and determines the National Champion for the year. The best thing about the trip is that was totally sponsored by the University of Minnesota, meaning I didn't have to pay a dime. Our job was to play at pep events and the games and we got to stay for 6 whole days. We won the semi-final with and AMAZING game ending buzzer-beater goal (I'll add a link if you want to watch it at the end of the post) but, sadly, lost in the final game.

BUT that's not what I'm going to be writing about. The 5th day in Philly I got to go to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Orchid Society (SEPOS) Show at the Museum of Natural History. I was blown away with the sheer number of orchids and the elaborate displays set up by the participants. If you're into orchids, this is the post for you. I've also included a few fun facts I learned at one of the panels about caring for Phalanenopis orchids (aka moth orchids). Keep reading to find out a few.

Being a Plant Wizard

Plant propagation always makes me feel like a wizard. Yesterday I was giving my plants a thorough watering and realized an African Violet I had in one pot was actually three smaller African Violet plants. I'd forgotten I propagated three of them in the same pot in my plant propagation class last year and had let them crowd each other in a tangle of leaves. I took them out, divided them easily, finding their root systems much shallower than I thought, and gave them their own pots. So it really did feel like I'd turned one plant into three and I'm excited to see how their growth takes off now that they have their own space to spread out.
They're happily sitting in their own pots , two on the windowsill (pictured) and one on a bookshelf off to the right (not pictured).

First Week of Class

Minnesota decided to welcome back the students of the Twin Cities campus with some of the most bitterly cold weather I've experienced in a long time. Even though the snow and ice can be beautiful, walking from class to class gets frighteningly cold some days.

Regular daytime temps for the first few days of class hovered between -15 and -8 degrees with a wind chill of between -25 and -20. Thankfully over the weekend we got a break and the temperature warmed up a bit, but we're expecting about a high of 9 degrees Friday. Looks like there's no escaping it, so really the only thing you can do is curl up with some hot chocolate, watch the snow and study.

And speaking of studying, from the little time I've had them, my classes this semester seem to be going well so far. I have Soil Science, Intro to Microeconomics, General Biology and Chemistry for the second time (I'm determined to beat it this time around!) All my professors seem really nice and they all lecture really well, which helps when it's 8AM and all I want is to be back in my bed sleeping.

There's not much new to report with my plants. I'm trying to protect them from the drafty area they're in, but I can't move them completely because that's the only part of my apartment that gets any sort of light. My apartment doesn't get any direct sunlight at all, just shaded daytime light, so I'm using a regular desk lamp on them a few hours a day for some warmth and hoping whatever light is getting through the windows is sufficient for their photosynthetic needs. Over break, I picked up a few new pots to replant a few things in and, my biggest find, a small, egg-shaped terrarium which I'm currently attempting to root an African Violet leaf cutting in.

 

The two in front are the ones that have new pots. I think they're pretty happy with all the new space they have to spread out in. :)

Please forgive the photo quality. I took the pictures at night and there really wasn't that much light in my living room. Really the only other thing new with plants so far is I think I may have gotten rid of the scale attacking my umbrella plant for good. This time, I used a 1 part water, 1 part peroxide mixture and applied it to the leaves with a cue-tip. I washed all the leaves with water afterward, just in case. I haven't seen any of the nasty patches on the leaves yet, so hopefully they're all gone.

That's about all I have to report for now. I have a feeling the next month or so is going to be pretty slow since it's winter and I'm pretty limited to what I can do to houseplants at the moment. Hope you're all staying warm! :)

Coming Home to Summer Flowers, Vegetables and Weeds...

Minnesota and Wisconsin, despite being incredibly hot and humid, made for a really awesome 4th of July trip. It was really great to see my friends and family again. First I went down to the Twin Cities and got to see all my college friends and march in a 4th of July parade (in the 100 degree weather). Then my family went to Wisconsin and stayed at our family's cabin for a few days, where we went tubing down the river near the cabin and floated around on the lake soaking up the sun.

 

My favorite skyline in the whole world.

 

The sunsets on the lake our cabin is on are awesome...

 

...like, really REALLY awesome. :)

So coming home after 9 days away I should've expected to find lots and lots of weeds. :P

 

I spent the early afternoon weeding out the bean patch that FINALLY has bean plants in it. Thankfully the weeds hadn't really taken a very good hold and were easy to pull out quickly.

The tomatoes have straw under them and didn't need as much weeding. They've gotten so much bigger than they used to be and most have little, green tomatoes.

The peppers are also off to a great start and two of them have peppers on them. They're not quite big enough to pick yet, but they're getting there, especially the green pepper.

Speaking of peppers, the grocery store peppers are doing really well. When I left, they were just seedlings, but I returned to healthy young plants. Hopefully I'll find room in the garden for all of them. It looks like my pea plants failed (which I'm rather sad about) but I'll probably use their bed for the little peppers.

 

 The peppers really took off while I was gone and now I just have to put them somewhere...

 

I had a few that got really big so I planted them in a bare spot in the garden right away. 

 On top of all this, I now have more basil than I know what to do with. Once it gets bigger, I'll probably start giving it away to friends who like to cook with it and try to find some recipes myself.

 

A clump of basil.

The flower garden is looking really nice as well. With all the heat we got over the past week, some of the flowers really popped.

 

I think these pink lilies are one of my favorite blooms right now.

 

The cleome and cosmos came out while I was away and looks really nice under the front window and behind the house.

 

The morning glory has climbed all the way up the fence and will probably have to spread out horizontally now since there's no where else to go. 

 

 I really love this shade of peachy-pink.

The houseplants are still doing as well as ever. I was really excited when I got a text from my dad while in Minnesota with a picture of my hibiscus blooming. It has lots of buds on it and the heat of last week finally gave it the push it needed to start blooming. It'll probably get 3 or 4 more blooms judging by how many buds are still unopened.

 

The rest of the houseplants are still loving the three-seasons room.

My dad has come up with some pretty cool metal hooks for holding plants and sculptures for  the vines on the side of our house. The three seasons room has a few of his new creations like the one now holding my very first spider plant.

 

Most of his metalwork uses rings like these. Even the trellis in the front yard made of giant rings.

He's also made the trellises in our yard, one out in the front garden that holds the climbing honeysuckle and the other that frames the walkway to our side porch.

The trellis on our side porch that leads to the front yard. It's hard to see from this angle, but he created this one with two long rods of metal, connected by small rings.

 It was great to come home and see how much the garden had grown. Now that the weeding is over, I'll be trying my hand at some new recipes for the garden party I'm planning for my birthday this coming Thursday. :) I haven't done a food post yet and, despite the fact that this is a gardening blog, I feel like cooking and gardening go hand in hand.That, tea parties are always adorable to photograph. ...Yes, my friends and I still have tea parties. We've decided we're going to make awesome old ladies. Hopefully I won't be too busy and can take a few pictures.

 

 

Propagating African Violets from Leaf Cuttings

One of my favorite experiments we've done in my horticulture lab this year is propagating new African Violets plants from leaf cuttings. Because our class gets to use the fancy mist house to root plants so, since I'm assuming most of you don't have access to a mist house, the technique I will describe here will be a bit different.

My mature African Violet that I took my leaf cuttings from.

1. Prepare your rooting media. In the greenhouse, we usually use sand, but I've read elsewhere that others prefer a mix of half perlite and half potting soil. Whichever you choose, fill up a 6-inch plastic pot with your rooting media and set it aside.

2. Take a mature African violet plant and choose a strong, healthy leaf. Cut off the leaf, leaving a good amount of leaf-petiole still attached. You cutting should look like this:

3. Make a hole in your rooting media with your finger and set the tip of the leaf cutting into it. Cover it lightly with soil so it stands upright and drizzle water over the soil so it's moist.

4. Put the cutting in a large plastic bag, blowing into it before zipping it shut.

5. Set it in bright, but indirect light and make sure to open the bag for about a half hour every four days or so to allow good air circulation.

6. After 3 or 4 weeks, check your leaf cutting for roots. If roots have formed, slowly acclimate the leaf cuttings to the air outside the bag so you can eventually take it out of the bag completely. If you choose to root the leaf in sand, once the roots have formed, transplant it to a pot with potting soil.

 My three leaf cuttings. They really seem to like it by the heater in my room. 

After a few weeks after rooting, new leaves will start to form. This is the beginning of your new African Violet. Once these leaves get bigger, the original leaf cutting will die off. (Don't worry, that's supposed to happen.)

 One of my leaf cuttings. This is what the new plant will look like. 

Tips:
-African Violets don't like to be top watered, so keep the pot in a dish and pour water into the dish, letting the dry soil soak it up and try not to get water on their leaves. This can cause leaf spotting and other problems. Try to keep the soil moist all the time. This way your African Violets will stay a lot healthier and happier. 
-If you want to do more than one, I suggest rooting all of the the cuttings in the same pot, then dividing them into separate pots after the roots have formed.
-They like sunlight but direct sunlight isn't necessary. They also like warm temperatures. I keep mine near the heater in my room and they seem to love it.