Archive for the 'Flowers' Category
Our black magic rose continues to bloom into November. Black magic is one my favorite roses in terms of its looks. Its flowers develop on very long straight stems that are ideal for cutting. Although black magic roses do not have much of a fragrance, they have a near perfect rose shape. And they hold their perfect rose shape for weeks unlike many other roses that open quickly and then drop their petals. For example, the yellow rose that I blogged about a few weeks ago opens and loses its petals in less than a week.
November 08 2008 | Roses | Comments Off on More Black Magic Roses
Our purple Phalaenopsis orchid is in full bloom. My partner bought this orchid for me as a birthday gift last November from a local florist. After all of the original flowers died, he managed to get it to bloom again after repotting it in a larger container with tree bark and then watering and fertilizing it once a week.
Every week, he soaks our orchid plants in a water bath in our kitchen sink, as shown in the lower picture. He fills the sink up about halfway with a few gallons of water. He then adds about a teaspoon of orchid fertilizer to the water bath to form a weak solution. He lets the orchids soak in the water bath for about five minutes. After taking them out of the water bath, he lets them drain completely. Our orchid plant was virtually dormant before he began this fertilizing and watering routine. Since he started, it has grown several new leaves and generated the flowers shown in these pictures.
My sister gave us a second orchid plant last summer. It was in her apartment for some time, and she could not get it to bloom again after the original flowers died. My partner has also been soaking that orchid plant in the same water bath every week for the past several months. It too is now growing a new flower stem. This stem will probably grow for 5-6 months before it starts blooming.
November 04 2008 | Orchids | Comments Off on Fertilizing and Watering Orchids
The cooler weather has not stopped our roses from blooming yet. In the past week, yellow, red, white, orange, purple, and peach colored roses have been blooming in our yard. This picture shows a pink Color Magic hybrid tea rose that just started blooming again for the first time in about 2 months.
I just bought this Color Magic rose bush from a local discount home improvement store last spring for about $6.50. When I bought it, it was small, and it only had a few stubby canes. In fact, a woman who was standing next to me in line when I was waiting to purchase it told me that she would not have picked that rose based on how it looked at the time.
But I had a feeling that it had potential. I have found that roses respond well to a little TLC. And for that price, how could I go wrong? I try to buy roses that have a thick stalk and thick canes. I think that the thicker roses are more mature, and therefore more likely to grow quickly once they are transplanted into the yard.
Our Color Magic rose has grown to over 5 feet tall from about 1 foot tall in past 6 months, and its leaves are dark green and healthy looking. It has grown particularly fast since I increased the amount of water it was getting in September. I think I only fertilized it once back in early summer.
November 02 2008 | Roses | Comments Off on More Autumn Roses
A few years ago, my mom and I noticed peach colored roses growing in front of a shopping mall. They had very attractive flowers. We decided that we had to know what kind of rose they were, so we got out of the car and searched for a label. We found a label on one of the bushes. It was a brandy hybrid tea rose. Since then, I have noticed Brandy roses growing in people’s gardens, at a local university, and in many other places.
I finally bought my own Brandy hybrid tea rose bush from a local nursery last summer. Although it looked good when I bought it, at first it seemed to struggle to grow and bloom. It produced a few flowers over the summer, but they were small, and they burned quickly after opening.
Over the summer, I was watering our Brandy rose using a low flow dripper. Since I replaced the dripper with a higher flow bubbler in early September, it has grown significantly. Now it has a flush of large and full blooms for the first time.
I think the unique fading peachy color of the petals is what makes this rose so appealing. The flowers also have a nice fragrance.
October 29 2008 | Roses | Comments Off on Brandy Rose
I have come to the conclusion that I haven’t been watering our rose bushes enough in the past, especially during the warm summer months. I once heard that a fully grown rose bush needs 7 gallons of water per week in order to flourish, but that seemed like a lot of water to me.
I was using low flow drippers to water our roses and other perennials. The drippers are fed from an automatic watering system. I was watering for about 10 minutes a day. The drippers had an output of 2 gallons per hour. That equals about 1/3 a gallon a day per dripper.
Last month, I replaced the drippers that were watering our roses and other shrubs with adjustable micro-stream bubblers that can output up to 13 gallons per hour. I also cut back on the watering to about 5 minutes per day. That equals about a gallon per day at their maximum setting, although I have most of the adjustable bubblers set to less than that depending on the size of the plant.
The bubblers send out micro-streams of water in a circle. The radius of the circle is easily adjustable up to a few feet. The bubbler design seems to be doing a better job of supplying water to the entire root system, rather than to just a portion of it.
The extra water seems to have made a big difference. Several of our roses have had very few flowers since mid-summer. Now most of our roses are full of new buds, such as the yellow hybrid tea rose in this picture. It has grown over twenty new buds just in the past 6 weeks since I put the bubblers in, after getting about 10 flowers over the entire summer. I don’t know what kind of hybrid tea rose it is, because it was growing here when I moved in.
October 27 2008 | Roses | Comments Off on Yellow Rose Needed More Water
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