More new additions

I had a friend visiting last week. We both spent much of our time working in my garden and hunting for plants together.

The results were a lot more succulents were added to my "desert garden" and an euphorbia flanaganii, a begonia, as well as a cute little pitcher plant to my container garden.

Also, my friend brought me some of her own plants from home. I've got this time, a fern and an airplant from her, not to mention some hoya cuttings I got last time when I visited her.

My friend is very crafty - she's made a little wreath out of the ivy I've had and some hanging wires for my tillandsias, too. Both looked so cute being hung at my back porch.

My friend loves cosmos, which she can't grow in her 'tropical' home. So I took a photo of her in front of my cosmos! They turned out very nice, don't you think?

What do you do when your "gardening" friends come to visit?

A promising future

Thanks to suitable water and light, my plants have started setting buds.
This week, I found all the six offshoots on my Tillandsia cyanea spiking! What a show it will be when these spikes bloom.

I also found the Asiatic lilies I planted in the garden last month budding, too. How cool! I'm very excited waiting for these lilies to bloom. They will be my first lily blooms, but I will definitely plant more after these!

The buds on the clivia plant that I talked about in my previous entry have opened up. Its bright orange blooms are showing off against the dark green foliage.

Wonderful weather has done wonder to the garden! Really.

My hoya blooms this week

Back to Tuysonvien this week, I found my Hoya pubicalyx pink silver is re-blooming for the first time since I bought it a year ago. Although there's only one umble on the plant this time, there're a lot of healthy new growths on it, so I hope to have quite a few more peduncles next time it come to bloom.

My H. multiflora, which was still in buds in my last visit, has now fully opened up. This plant is still confusing me with its true identity: I don't know if it's proper to tag it as H. multiflora or not since the Apodagis man has mentioned it could be Hoya lii!

And this is one of my H. carnosas, which I planted outside and being trained up a lattice. It seems to like its current place in the sun for it has produced 9 umbels! Show here are 6 on the lower part.

How I just love hoyas - their blooms are beautiful looking and oh so fragrant!

Orchids

I keep orchids in both in my 'hot' garden and my 'cool' garden. These days I have several orchids in bloom. Guess I'm having the best of both worlds!

Here're my brassavolas; the white one is B. nodosa and the yellowish brown is a NOID.

Brassavolas are faithful broomers. If kept in good conditions, each new growth will produce a spike having from 2-3 blooms. I especially like brassavolas for their delicate leaf form and blooms. Don't you think they look lovely?

I also have this cattleya blooming faithfully, too. This is a different kind of cattleya which bears 3-4 flowers on one spike. I personally prefer this type of cattleya over the other type which bears a single big, showy flower on its spike.

Then I have these species orchids. This one is called "Fox tail", perhaps due to the resemblance of the blooming stalk and the tail of the fox.

And last one is a totally NOID to me, I don't know even its Vietnamese name.

But named or NOID, these orchids are lovey. I guess I'm blessed with the right growing conditions for orchids. Do you grow orchids? Do they bloom for you regularly?

New acquisitions

I went to visit a friend in Can Tho and came back with two basketfuls of plants yesterday. Among them are hoya cuttings, bromeliads and some tropicals.

One of the hoya cuttings I like best is Hoya mindorensis. I felt so lucky I could get a named variety for once.

Other cuttings are not yet identifiable due to lack of blooms.

I also got three very attractive bromeliad crypanthus. I especially like their stripe pattern and bold color.

I don't know the names of the tropicals, unfortunately, but they all look very lovely.

If any visitor to my blog happens to know the ID of any of these plants, please give me a ring.

Dahlias blooms and Asiatic lily seedlings

I suppose I have learned a lot more from gardening this year than ever before.

In the past, from reading home and garden magazines, I understood that perienals are a class of plants that would live on and bloom for more than one flowering seasons.

Living in a tropical country, I rarely witness plants dormancy. In my garden, many plants flower, and then I cut off their stems for new shoots, and they grow and flower again, on and on for some time. My roses, fuchsias, dianthus, hydrangeas perform like that. These plants grow and bloom year round in my garden.

Last dry season, I noticed that all my dahlias were "gone" and I thought they were gone for good. But after a few rains, I spotted their appearance. And now they bloom.

In the same manner is the new Asiatic lilies that I got as blooming potted plants last Tet holidays. I suspected that they were bulbs but never did a proper research on their cultivation. I left them in the shade house, their pots and all, after they've done flowering. Several weeks ago, I noticed their new growths. I looked up information regarding this kind of plant and learned that they would do better in the garden. So I planted them there. This is how they are this week.

I will watch closely and see how these lilies turn out. If they do well, I might try to purchase different colors this Tet holidays to enlarge my collection.

It's amazing about how much you can learn with actual gardening as you go.

Now I know more about light

Although I've known all along that plants need light to grow and I've been giving them the light they need. But it's now confirmed to me even more what light can do to plants.

As you know already, I made a succulent bed outside in my garden about two weeks ago. Before planting the succulents in this bed, I have put them outside to 'acclaimate'; but still they were protected somehow from the harsh sun and torrent rain we normally have here.

Since they were planted in the bed and except for a few days at the beginning, I left them to nature. Of course I worried that they might get rot but still I wanted to see what would happen.

When I returned to Tuysonvien at the beginning of this week, the first thing I checked was the succulent bed. To my delight, all have been very well, except for a seedling gasteria. Moreover, some of them have acquired a new reddish tin thanks for the high level of light they got.

Then I found out, too, that my clivia was setting buds as well. This clivia has been kept in my shade house all this time. Last year, it bloomed in early May. This year, despite my 'checking' around, it didn't show any sign of buds. So I brought it outside. And this is the result of increased level of light.

But the most amazing thing is my medinila. Look how many bud tips it has after being moved out of the carnopy of a big tree in my yard.

Now I know more about the importance of light to flower induction in plants, definitely.

New pet plant

It's a pitcher plant. I don't really know the exact species/cultivar though.

The plant looks quite lush but many old pitchers have dried up, perhaps, due to the vendors not knowing how to take care of the plant properly.

According to information on the web, there're two (or three) species: low land, high land (and imtermediate). The plant I bought is low land, so I will keep it in my 'hot' garden.

The 'pitcher' is the swelling part of the central vine of the leaf which grows beyond the length of the leaf. There are many little "veins" at the end of the leaves on my plant so I expect there will be many 'pitchers" coming up.

I intend to multiply this plant by cuttings. But that can wait a little longer until I have learnt enough how to care for this kind of plant.

Here comes Salmon Pearl!

The last of the bulbs DD bought me has opened its beautiful, amazing blooms in salmon pink!

It is truly a new cultivar for me and I'm thrilled!

The bulb has three scapes, two have developed fully and opened while the third one seemed to have stunted. Wonder why?

Anyway, I'm enjoying these stunning blooms sooooooooo much. According to a web site, its name is Hippeastrum salmon pearl. How right!

White parade

Returned to Dangiatrang yesterday and was greeted by these white blooms.

First, two of those amaryllis that I got from DD have opened their blooms. While I was hoping to have Picotee or Lemon Lime, what I got is some varieties that look like Dancing Queen.

Since the bulbs were quite stressed and have shrinked considerably, I decided to cut off the flower stalks to save the bulbs energy for next year performance.

Then the Hoya multiflora. All the buds, except three, have opened fully. The umbel now looks like a group of shooting stars. Very splendid, indeed.

And finally, the Brassavola nodosa orchid. This season I have three blooms on the plant but the new growth which producing these blooms is not as big as those old ones. Perhaps the plant needs more nutritions. I must remember to feed it regularly from now.

Feel so happy!