Impending Bloom Boom!

I haven't necessarily been neglecting my plants lately, I just haven't inspected them as thoroughly as I sometimes do.  That is until today when I was making my watering rounds and I noticed a few of the little rascals are gearing up to pop some buds pretty soon!

Here is my kalanchoe plant FINALLY starting to show signs of blooms again!  I caught these little pricks out of the corner of my eye and was like WHOA, something is going on here!  So I brought it out into the light and took a closer examination.

We have a couple peaks here showing some new growth formations!

Below is what a typical new leaf growth looks like...

...and below you can see the new bloom growth adjacent to typical leaf growth.  Yeah, I'm pretty sure we have some blooms making their way back into this plant!

And my oh my I did not even see this spike start, look how long it has gotten!

What I like about this orchid arrangement is I can see that the roots are doing very well.  I never really water this one much, since the water tends to never really evaporate from the bottom - possibly because of the shape of this vase?  I mean, the soil is mostly bark so there is plenty of airspace - although it is rather tall so maybe that makes it tough for the water to dry out?  I'm just pondering this because the plants that I have in smaller glass jars or vases definitely dry out, and I can't quite put my finger on why this one doesn't.  Perhaps it's a moot point, given that we have a nice spike going here!

New "Pots" and Fresh Rock

When asked if I would like to become the new owner of a hoarder's collection of old baby food jars, I couldn't have been more ecstatic!  Those jars are great for all sorts of of practical purposes, whether spray painted and bedazzled for storage solutions a la pinterest, or fill with snackage during trips or work, or, most applicably to this blog, for potting new baby plants!

Boxes of baby food jars after this post's pottings:

My first plan with these jars was to provide new homes for all of my succulent propagations which had been in mismatched clay pots and saucers and other random pots.  This involved probably 15-20 jars, not to mention I used up all of the stones I had.

Then I decided to repot my bamboo, which probably wasn't quite thriving in its unsupported "soil."  I took it out of the green pot it came in which had some tiny stones and dirty stone debris along with mostly the water storage gels.  As much as I like the gels, I really like the look of the bamboo growing in just straight polished stone as view through glass.  One day I may return to the gels, when my bamboo is on the verge of obliteration from water neglect, but for now I feel confident I can keep it watered and looking classy.

Not all of my orchids have been thriving lately.  The one and only orchid I've been able to get to re-bloom (albeit for a short while) was the one I had transplanted to a glass vase.  Since my little itty bitty orchid seems to be doing all right and has in fact sprouted a new babe, I decided to move this one into glass jar to hopefully continue its success.

And lastly, because I like to rearrange my plants so often - partly due to the ever-changing climate and lighting conditions, partly due to individual plant growth, and mainly due to my need for a fresh and interesting display - I will include a photo of my plant corner:

Note to future self: take more "before" photos...

Sun Burn

A new thing I'm trying this summer is to put plants outside by my front door.  This may be a little aggressive, because with the way my apartment is laid out, all my windows face East, North or West, and my front door faces South.  So plants that are used to brief periods of sunlight are suddenly fully exposed all day long.  And it's been a little bit warm out there.  So I am finding that after a few days, no matter what plant I try, there is sun burn.

I've read that you should really stage this, like do 4 hours the first couple days and slowly increase exposure allowing plants time to adjust.  However, I work a full-time job and somehow I think that exposing the plants to the sun between the hours of 5am and 8am won't really help it transition to all day.  So I've been trying this all or nothing approach.

Below you can see some examples of the sun burn.

Wandering Jew:
(I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to let this one ride it out or if I'm going to move it to a shadier spot or just bring it back inside.)

Sedum clippings:

Kalanchoe:

Succulent Propagation Struggling Outdoors

So I realize that taking brand new baby succulents, that don't even have roots yet, and sticking them in new soil, thrusting them out into a wilderness mix of more intense sunlight and more extreme temperatures is probably a terrible idea.  But I tried it anyway.  I wanted a companion piece to my hanging basket and since my door faces south, I figured it would be some great light for the succulents.  Well, the temperature is still dipping down pretty low in these late May weeks.  And it is starting to show on my plants.  So tonight I decided I would start bringing the pots in at night.  I walk right past them going in and out of my house, this should be a task I will remember to do.

May 2014, brought the plants inside:

Hard to see in the below image, but the sedum leaves have dark brown splotches on them.  Such significant contrasting color change in such a short period of time can never be a good sign.

I think I will keep these little propagation pots inside on the window sill with the terrariums.  I slipped plastic sleeves into the saucers to prevent the overflow from further damaging the wood window sill.

Conversely, the "terrarium" propagations look like they are handling their new location, a west-facing window just inside my front door.

Kalanchoe

I first bought this plant from Frederick's Flowers back in September 2013.  It was in bloom already so I'm not sure how long the bloom typically lasts.  I believe blooms started to fall off in the winter time.  It didn't really get totally bare until a couple months ago.  In some recent research, you are supposed to cut the flower stems back after the blooms fall off, to promote new blooms in the next season.  I think I am in the blooming season now because some blooms are starting up again.

September 2013:

April 2014:

After my recent post about propagating some succulents, I remembered that this rascal was a succulent and, shoot, it's grown so much new foliage over the past few months, why not try ripping some of that off - excuse me, pruning it back - and using the clippings as potential propagations.  The first thing I did was to remove undesirable leaves.  In the photo below you can see I have cut off or pulled off the oldest leaves at the bottom, most of which had started to turn crispy brown at the tips.  I'm not sure why they turned brown like that, but that's a mystery for another post.  Another thing to note is that those leaves are monsters compared to the new growth.  I'm wondering if the new green leaves will enlarge as much as the older leaves are or if I should be modifying my care of this plant.

April 2014:

In the photo below you can see that I am trying some cluster clippings and some leaf clippings.  Usually I find that cluster clippings (for plants in general) develop faster, so we'll see how these pan out.  It seems that with succulents you need to let them "dry out" or "callus over" before you try to get the new clippings to grow roots.  So here I have laid them out on a dry East-facing window sill to sit for a few days.

 Here is the post-pruning mama plant with some minimal new blooms:

I also decided now would be a good time to repot, mainly because I had just purchased some potting soil that is supposed to be good for succulents and cactuses.  You can see in the photo below that this plant has not become "root bound" in the pot, so I figure I will just try to remove as much of the soil from the rootball without damaging the root system, and repot into the same pot using some new cactus soil.

I have to post photos of the newly modified succulent cluster - I moved it outside onto my front door stoop, hopefully so it can get some more direct sunlight throughout the day, since my door faces South.  Although I do have some concern that going from 9 months in my climate-controlled house to every day in rising and lowering temperatures and humidity levels may be a bit too much of a shock for many of the new clippings to survive.  Perhaps tomorrow I will take some out and bring them back inside to use as a "control group."