Succulents Winter/Spring 2016

We have expanded into succulents very recently.

We purchased this beautiful arrangement from a local seller, which gave us a nice variety to start off with. Some were even in bloom and had pups.

These jellybean sedums are my favourite. This one is Sedum Rubrotinctum - red jellybean. The red colour is a stress response so don't treat them too well and you will get a lovely colour.

We also purchased some loose rooted and unrooted cuttings which we roughly arranged into a few pots. Here, there's an assortment of donkeytail sedum, sedum gold mound, sedum rubrotinctum aurora (pink jellybean), Haworthia attenuata (?) and firesticks.

Here is a close up of some of them. It's nice to have a variety of shapes and colours to play with.

After potting, there were lots of fallen loose leaves, so we've just stuck them in a pot to hopefully develop into baby succulents.

Vireya Rhododendron Cara Mia

We picked up a Vireya rhododendron for cheap in the first week of August.

This one is a Cara Mia vireya rhododendron.

There were a few buds developing on the plant when we purchased it.

Here is the bloom in late August, a soft yellow shading to pink. This is just after opening. Ever since then, the flowers have opened a bit more fully and have tilted upwards more instead of outwards like here.

Oncidium Twinkle fragrant miniature orchids

Today I have photos showing two varieties of miniature oncidium orchids.

These are Oncidium Twinkles, in a yellow variety and a red one (Red Fantasy). When we purchased them at the end of May, they had plenty of spikes with developing buds.

About 2 weeks later, you can see the buds getting larger (red on left, and yellow on right).

This is at the same time, you can see a visible difference. However, these do take a long time to develop and bloom.

They finally started to bloom around the middle of August. A very interesting looking bloom.

Here is Oncidium Twinkle Red Fantasy, partially blooming and then fully bloomed. The colour also lightens gradually with time.

This is Oncidium Twinkle Yellow, very bright and cheerful miniature flowers.

The two varieties together. Remember, these are miniature orchids - very small! Another thing is, once they are fully bloomed, you can smell a sweet fragrance from these Twinkles. A bit hard to describe, not quite floral, more honey-sweet.

However, these blooms only lasted about 3 weeks which is fairly long but not for orchids. Perhaps they need to settle in more since they were bought in spike. Next year, we hope to get plenty more spikes with lots of long-lasting blooms. 

Phalaenopsis, Oncidium Twinkle, Cattleya-Laelia orchids

To follow on from the previous post, here are a few more orchids.

Here is a photo of the Oncidium Twinkle Yellow and Red Fantasy from the last post, next to a mini phalaenopsis. So you can see they are much smaller.

This is a mini phal that I purchased online already blooming in mid-July. It is a small, sturdy plant with relatively small orange blooms of about 4 to 5cm. As you can see, the first photo was taken later and all the buds had bloomed by then.

Here is a close-up of the blooms with some pink and purple shades around the lip. This mini phal is still going strong 6 weeks later and it looks like it is going to keep going.

Here is a much larger phalaenopsis I purchased at the same time, a very soft purple moth-type bloom.

However this was a bit more delicate and did not deal with the post/new weather very well. It has since been repotted and we are waiting now to see if it will recover.

This Cattleya-Laelia orchid was picked up even earlier - mid April. Lovely graceful purple blooms. These are meant to be fragranced but we could not detect anything.

Just waiting for this one to bloom again one day.

Start of Spring 2016

Lots of plants are waking up now that the weather is warming up.

A beautiful sign that spring is here is that all the cherry blossoms start appearing. Our street is lined with ornamental cherry trees so it always looks lovely in late August-September.

Surprisingly, our lotus plant which has been dormant all winter decided to produce a little leaf in early August. It has put up another miniature one since then but will probably take a bit warmer weather to really get going. Hopefully it will manage to flower this season.

We picked up a pack of Erlicheer jonquil bulbs for cheap in winter and potted them. As you can tell by the name, they are early bloomers and sprouted really quickly by the start of August.

By the end of August, the jonquils were blooming with many-petaled, creamy white flowers.

Here are the flowers close up. These also have a very strong fragrance.

We have now been living in this place for a year! Remember one of the first posts about our Chinese jasmine? I mentioned that we had cut it back, so that it's now just in the corner.

This week, the first flowers bloomed on the vine. We have come full circle!

Winter potted colour - Winter 2016

Various flowers that have brightened up the garden in winter 2016.

A whole selection, it was actually a very colourful winter. 

One that was extremely prolific were the purple and white/lavender pansies. The coral and yellow snapdragon also bloomed profusely for a while but we had some temperamental weather and it wasn't doing too well. We have since moved it to a different location and it is recovering and trying to flower again.

The pansies aboved were purchased as a small and cheap 'potted colour' and they completely took over the hanging basket and were blooming all through winter.

We even spotted some seeds and pansies are meant to be very good at self-seeding so maybe there will be some pleasant surprises next year.

The Fuchsia "Candy Lights" also started blooming in July/August. Very interesting flowers and a nice bright contrasting colour.

We managed to get a Kangaroo Paw (Anigozanthus Bush Pearl) for cheap and it flowered in early August with fuzzy pink spikes.

Our Westringia (Wynyabbie Gem) has also been flowering profusely all winter with small pale purple blooms all over.

Bits of greenery

Just some photos of things growing.

After wet weather, these appeared.

Growing a baby succulent from leaf.

On the windowsill, we have some algae balls. When there's sunlight, they produce little bubble of oxygen which are the bright circles in the photo.

Our Buddleia "Spring Promise" which is meant to be a butterfly/bird-attracting plant. It started producing plenty of spikes in early July but suddenly shriveled up in August. Not sure if this will recover at the moment.

Our native wattle, Acacia cognata "Green Magik" started producing lots of little buds all along its branches. We are currently waiting to see what develops.

Garden Centre Camellias

I took a few photos for future reference while we were visiting garden centres this autumn/winter.

Early May - Camellia sasanqua Early Pearly

Early June - Camellia japonica Betty Ridley

Early June - Camellia japonica Debbie

Early July - Camellia japonica Emperor of Russia