I just watched a California’s Gold episode about the Santa Barbara International Orchid Show and they showed a Cymbidium Orchid named after the host of the show: Cymbidium Huell Howser. I like its color and searching to see if there is one for sale online.
Category Archives: Gardening
Pacific Orchid Exposition 2012 + Orchid Purchases…
My Mom and I went to the San Francisco Pacific Orchid Exposition at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Like in the previous years, the Orchids were beautiful and there was so much to see. I’ll post photos from the show in a later entry.
Since we tend to kill Orchids, we have only purchased Orchids that will survive outdoors, mainly cool/intermediate weather Orchids like Cymbidiums, Epidendrum and Masdevallias, with a few Zygopetalum and Maxillaria.
I found two inexpensive Masdevallias:
– Masdevallia Angel Glow ‘Zi’
– Masdevallia Angel Frost ‘Sunset Velour’
My Mom wasn’t going to leave the show until she got a few Orchids. She wanted a particular Dendrobium, but that Orchid needed bright light and warm weather, so we didn’t get that. She ended up choosing two:
– Epicattleya Rene Marques ‘Tyler’
– Epidendrum Crystal Valley ‘Orange Ball’
For fun, I searched the internet for the parentage of these Orchids and here’s what I came up with:
Continue reading
Berkeley Plant Purchases…
I stopped by two nurseries in Berkeley and found some really cool plants, that I had to purchase.
From Westbrae Nursery:
– Meadow Foam (Limnathes douglasii)
– Rose Campion (Lychnis coronaria)
– Sugar Snap Peas
From Berkeley Horticulutral Nursery:
– Broccoli Raab ‘Zamboni’
– Gai Lan ‘Green Lance’
– Leaf Broccoli ‘Getti di Naoli’
– Portuguese Kale ‘Galega da Folhas Lisas’
– Kale ‘Redbor’
– Tree Collard (Purple Stem)
– Snow Pea ‘Golden Podded Pea’
My Potting Table
My current potting table is just a heavy duty cargo trunk with wheels. It’s elevated on bricks to a comfortable level and can hold about 4 cubic feet of potting soil.
Earlier today, as I passed by it… the gloves that I left resting on the side freaked me out.
Another Busy Gardening Day…
I started the day off harvesting some Swiss Chard ‘Green’ for lunch… My Mom used it in Filipino dish called Nilagang Manok, which literally translated means Boiled Chicken. I really love Swiss Chard, including the stems which remains firm when cooked. They are not stringy like some Bok Choy stems.
After lunch, I when to the garden and did a bunch of seed sowing. A few years ago, I experimented with winter sowing. I used milk jugs as containers, but didn’t have such good luck. I think the base didn’t have enough soil and it dried out too quickly. This winter, I’m going to use 6-8 inch pots as the minimum size. I also used standard 1-gallon containers. I filled the pots lower than if I were to plant a plant in them. This will leave some protection when the seedling emerge. I used plastic covers with elastic sewn in the edges to cover the pots. These were pretty cheap; I think the box came with 12-18 covers for $1. This will keep the soil from drying out and I think the elastic may even help keep the slugs out… which is another problem I had previously. I sowed the following seeds:
– Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearl’
– Alyssum ‘Gold Dust’
– Zinnia (Fall 2005)
– Mystery Flower (maybe Gazania Daisy?)
– Sunflower Lemon Queen (old seeds that I found hidden away in storage)
I wanted to get rid of some really old seeds like the Sunflower above and I also found two packets of Radishes from 1984!!! I emptied the two packets (Radish ‘Red Deveil B’ and Radish ‘White Icicle’) into a 12 inch pot… I don’t really expect them to grow, but if any are still viable, here’s their change to grow.
I planted a 10 inch pot with lots of Cilantro seeds that I harvested last year. I hope the Cilantro grows densely so we can harvest a lot. I then replenish one of the 3-gallon GeoPots that we harvested the Purple Bok Choy from and planted a bunch of Lettuce ‘Wildfire Mix’ that I bought a few days ago. I still had a bunch of seedling, so I potted to into large cell-packs to plant out later.
I’m not sure where to plant the other new plants I got, so I divided the small-packs of Kale ‘Rainbow’ and Kale ‘Siberian’ into 3 inch pots, so they can grow a bit before I figure out where to plant them. I was surprise how healthy the young seedlings were. I was able to divide the Kale ‘Rainbow’ into 17 individual pots!!!… and I’ll give some away to friends and relatives.
I also started grafting, since our Asian Plum tree near the storage is starting to bloom. I grafted four total today and will do more later:
– Asian Plum ‘Golden Nectar’ (Graft 2012-01)
– Plumcot ‘Burbank’ (Graft 2012-02)
– Asian Plum ‘El Dorado’ (Graft 2012-03)
– Apricot ‘Canadian White’ (Graft 2012-04)
I hope these take.
First Batch of Grafts…
I did my first batch of grafts this year onto the Asian Plum (near storage) 
that has already started to set buds. They include:
– Asian Plum ‘Golden Nectar’
– Plumcot ‘Burbank’
– Asian Plum ‘El Dorado’
– Apricot ‘Canadian White’
Another Earthquake + Vlog + Repottings…
This morning, I was waken up by another earthquake. It sounded like someone pounded on my bedroom window and shook my loft bed… and since I was up on my loft bed, I thought to myself that I need to get down, just in case. I then saw on the news that it was another 3.7 magnitude earthquake and the epicenter was about at the same location as yesterday’s earthquake; about 6 miles south of us.
I’ve been watching YouTube quite a bit lately and have learned a lot about gardening, sewing, quilting, cooking, DIY projects, etc. There are several YouTubers who I admire and watch regularly… and this got me thinking… Maybe I should make some videos to add to this blog… So later this afternoon, I got out my FlipVideo MinoHD camera which I hardly use, since I don’t really do much video, and gave it a try. I got this camera as a gift for being the employee of the year at my previous job.
My first attempt was just an introduction to my seedlings in newspaper pots sitting in the front yard. I basically, showed my various Bok Choys, Chard, etc. It was though getting into it, but after a while I just kept talking and talking… which was weird, because I felt like I’m talking to myself.
I then shot another video of me transplanting my Daikon seedlings into a Dirt Pot fabric pot. I’m trying an experiment to see if how well Daikons will grow if I sowed them indoors under grow lights until they have sprouted for about 3 day, then hardening them off outside for a day or two. They were a bit leggy, but I buried them deep so the first set of leaves where just above the soil line. I haven’t had any luck growing Diakons in the past and hopefully this method may work, since it’ll be in full sun in the front yard.
I noticed that the volunteer Bells of Ireland plant was all dried up, so I pulled it up and collected its seeds. The bract-like stuff surrounding the seeds were aged and looked like lace… (I can’t think to the word for this process)… Many of the seeds already fell, so we should have some volunteers, but I’ll still plant all the seeds I collected into a 1-gallon pot to winter sow. I’ll transplant them once they sprout and develop a few leaves.
A bunch of plants in pots are in need of a bit of soil replenishing, before they started actively growing. First, I just added compost, azomite and worm castings to a small Daylily ‘Frank Hals’ pot to bring up the soil line.
I then emptied the pot of Orange Bottlebrush Ginger which really needed repotting. The roots were massive and winding around several times. There were two distinct branching of the Ginger corm and I decided to divide it in two. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just pretended it was a Bearded Iris. I cut a majority of the root ends leaving about 4 inches on the corm and broke away the oldest corm segments. I then repotted the two cleaned up corms into a larger 5-gallon pot. I hope this encourages this Ginger to flower. Its only flowered once in the past and I was away, so I didn’t see it.
I found another small pot of a Peruvian Daffodil which I think will benefit with new soil. I dug the bulbs up and there were 5 healthy bulbs all close together. I can’t remember how many I originally started with and I can’t seem to find a record of when I bought these. I spread the bulb apart and repotted them with some added compost, azomite and worm castings.
February 2012 Bloom Day…
I was reminded that today is February 2012 Bloom Day, so I went through our garden and took photos of everything in bloom. I didn’t have time to process all the photos, but I wanted to post at least one, so I can get the February 2012 Bloom Day Badge on Folia. I’ll update this post when I upload more blooms.
