New to Orchids

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Finally got around to repotting my AVs. I was cleaning up the dead leaves and flowers when I found this growing seed pod. Something must've pollinated it 'cause I didn't do this lol. Since I just repotted it I'm not sure if it will survive but if it does I might try growing them? Worth a shot I think....

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There's a super rare thunderstorm happening outside so I'm using my time to set up a somewhat tropical living vivarium for my crested gecko. It's my first time doing one of these but I'm pretty proud on how it turned out...

Substrate is made of a drainage layer of hydroton, weed prevention mesh, and a dirt mixture of Zoo Med Eco-Earth, Zoo Med Forest Floor (cypress mulch), and All Living Things fir bark.

For plants there's just a Red Fern in the front left, a Rabbit's Foot Fern (which scared the bejeezus out of me at the nursery, why does the rhizome look like tarantula legs?!) behind it, some sort of ivy looking plant that didn't have a name (tag literally just said 'tropical plant'), Chinese Evergreen on the right back corner and a maidenhair fern I threw behind it. There's also a couple miscellaneous tillandsias and I also have a magnetic bromeliad planter that I'm planning to put in once I get some neodymium magnets.

Finding the wood pieces for this tank were a pain because for the life of me I can't find any good driftwood whatsoever and had to settle for bird perches so....yeah they're all heat treated so here's praying they don't rot or something. :/ I have about 3 manzanita branches, a grapewood branch and a fir branch for climbing space and a medium size half log as a planter and mid-level floor space around the chinese evergreen.

After all those were in place I then topped off any large areas of exposed substrate with Zoo Med Terrarium Moss.

Now the hard thing to do is wait for the plants to settle in and wait for my little guy to get a tad bigger or risk losing him among all this foliage.

Here's how he looks like for anyone curious. 

I believe he's (sex still undetermined) a harlequin morph but nothing super special. Would like to get my hands on a halloween morph though but right now if I were to get another gecko I'm aiming for a baby either red pinstripe gargoyle gecko (white base color when not fired up, not dark) or a light colored (light grey to white) gargoyle gecko with dark pinstripes..

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My haul from this month's flea market. I tried to resist because of the amount of space I have but they were all calling my name. When you get bit by the orchid bug you get bit HARD. I was going to try vlogging this but my embarrassment overcame my will////. Idk if I'd be a good vlogger anyways...

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My alata is opening it's 2nd pitcher. This time it's much bigger so hopefully it'll catch some of the annoying flies and moths in this house. And maybe a few Mosquitos.

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I just got this Potinara Love Call ‘Nora’ (which is ironic to me ‘cause I just watched Noragami last night) along with a Dtps. Little Gem Stripes. This is the third time I've bought one (dtps.) because no matter what I do for the life of me they always manage to die. The ones I usually get were seedlings but this time the place I usually buy the at had some that were in spike so...hopefully a mature plant will do better for me....hopefully. I really want this to work out because I love the look of the flowers, I think I just have bad luck when it comes to phalaenopsis type orchids if that's hard to believe...even I can't believe it to be honest... But yeah I didn't expect the Potinara to be so...dry though... All the roots are shriveled to nothingness except for one which has a growing tip thank goodness, although it's lucky for me that cattleyas actually like my windowsill haha I don't know if they like it enough to flower for me since the ones I have are still seedlings and the Gemanii is starting to lose it's blooms but they do grow roots like crazy. They produce way more root growth than any of my other orchids it astounds me. The seedling roots are already starting to want to grow out through the slits in the pot.

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Good news for my Odorous Princess 'Tainstar', I decided to check it today (more like just now) to see if it needed water since I haven't watered it since my last post about it. I think my pot needs more air holes since the bottom 30-40% of the pot always has condensation in it and I don't believe it dries out very well despite using large super chunky hunks of bark for aeration, but that's besides the point. Anyways I found some new growths starting and even some new roots if you can tell in the 2nd pic. The root system was not too bad to begin with so I'm not sure how it ended up getting so dehydrated but now that I see it's growing well I feel a little relieved although I'll be fully relieved once I see all these pseudobulbs plump back up.

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I felt like looking at orchids last night and boy was that a bad idea. I just went to my local Trader's Joe and there was almost NOTHING left. I guess it slipped my mind that it was the night before Valentine's Day. Whoops. But while I was there this cymbidium caught my eye. I really loved the color of the flowers. Cymbidiums are usually my mom's thing but she tends to buy either the yellow ones or the red ones but if you couldn't tell I really love white flowers haha;; 

This is my first Cymbidium which to be honest I never thought I'd own because Cymbidiums do well outside here in the Bay Area and I'm not much of an outdoor gardener 'cause I'm kinda lazy;; but whatever, when I first started getting into orchids I never thought I'd get into any other orchids besides phalaenopsis and now I'm in love with any orchid with a pseudobulb lol

This cymbidium is a little rootbound I'm pretty sure 'cause the pot is sooo tiny compared to the plant and very very hard. I can't even squeeze the pot. I want to repot it right away but I'll enjoy the blooms a little longer since they're already starting to fade.

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Mac’s Scorching Sun

My semi-miniature AV. The flower is supposed to be a lot lighter in color. Sort of orange-y red or maybe lemonade pink or something but I guess because of light conditions it ended up being a deep dark red which is also pretty nice. (Sorry my lights and ipod didn't bring the color out very well) But the flower wasn't the reason why I got this guy, it was the leaves. I mean....have you ever seen variegation like this? Granted it's probably my low light conditions but I've never seen the secondary color completely take over the main color of the leaves.  Before I had this guy on my windowsill but I guess it got too much sun and all the yellow in the leaves turned green but after I moved it under the lights the yellow started coming back. It's become one of my favorites because of how different it is. If I could get more AVs with beautiful flowers and awesome variegated leaves I would. I want to get my hands one one with pink variegation heheheh...

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Just a reference pic for me. Feel free to to ignore. I'm just documenting progress if this girl pulls through at all. My cousin got me this a month ago and I really hope he didn't pay full price for this. The flowers were fading and the pseudobulbs were all shriveled up like the pictures show so the minute I got it I cut off the spike and repotted it right away. I had hope for it to recover since it was growing a new shoot but even though I kept it on the dry side (it's all the way in the back and I get lazy moving orchids to reach for it to water it) the new shoot plus an old one managed to rot and fall off so now I'm wondering if it'll be okay at all... It's been a week since I cut the rotted parts off and now the leaves are starting to yellow... Oh well fingers crossed.

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doubleplusunlucky replied to your photo “My Lyon’s ‘Louisiana Lullaby’ finally started putting out blooms for...”

That is a gorgeous violet! I've never given them a fair shake, but flowers like that might be enough to change my mind. : )

Oh yes! You should give these guys a try. If you like flowers like these definitely go for semi-double or doubled flowers. They are usually pretty large blooms for an AV. I think mine (referring to Easy Breezy and Louisiana Lullaby) are semi-double and they grow to be at least 2 in. in diameter. 

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My Lyon's 'Louisiana Lullaby' finally started putting out blooms for me which is a huge relief haha;; When I first got it and repotted it I ripped out all the blooms it came with (for safety precautions) and several of the outer leaves (to decrease the load of stress for it after I repotted it) and then it did a whole lot of nothing. It stopped growing and started losing more leaves and was basically withering away while the other two I got from Lyon's (Easy Breezy and Mac's Scorching Sun) were doing absolutely fine. After a while I just moved it away from my window and just left it under lights to see if that would help and although it grew rather weird (I can't tell where the crown is anymore haha;;) at least it's thriving enough to put out blooms for me which are spectacular btw. It's hard to tell in the picture but according to the website the edges are light in color which is mostly true but on the petals that have the dark purple the edges are actually kind of a bright green which I absolutely love. I'm so proud of this guy for pulling through when he had like...only 4 crinkly looking sad leaves.

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I know I should've made a post about this earlier seeing as I've had this oncidium for a while but I just found out as I was watering my other orchids that it is scented! It's a sort of lemony scent (at least to me since I don't normally try comparing the smell of flowers) which is awesome 'cause I love citrus smells. I found this little gem at the orchid seller I normally go to. It was a little pricey (to me although I haven't compared prices) as it was $10 but since my cousin paid for it... Hahaha;; but he bought one for himself (a yellow one with orange lips I think) so it's all good;;;; Anyways I really do like the flowers on this plant because they kind or remind me of like, tiny cherry blossoms with the pale pink petals and the bright yellow lip. Plus the smell it gives off is absolutely great but I don't know if it's strong enough to fill the room.... HOWEVER if you ever manage to find this variety I suggest you grab it before anyone else does even if you have to fight 'em for it!

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My nepenthes alata opened it's first pitcher for me a couple days ago and is now developing its peristome quite nicely. And also to my surprise it even caught something all in its own despite being on a closed windowsill. It's a little misshapen but I heard getting them to pitcher outside a greenhouse was very difficult so misshapen or not I'm glad it likes the windowsill enough to do so. I'm noticing another leaf tip starting to curl up into a pitcher shape so hopefully I get another one growing soon.

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This is the drosera capensis that I've been taking care of for my cousin. I was sort of neglectful towards it and set it in a pretty dark area in my room so it sorta grew elongated until I was able to get some grow lights installed. I'm not sure if I can just behead it and replant it and hope it'll grow new roots but I don't want to risk it. In the time span I've had it the dewy tentacles have been growing from being less than an inch long to at least two inches long but this is the first time I've seen this growth. I know what a new leaf looks like but I've never seen this fuzzy growth before. I'm wondering if this could be my first flower spike?! Haha jk but it's quite interesting. I've never grown a sundew before but this was a nice experience. Even though it's winter I've been finding Mosquitos flying around my room so whenever I spot one I take this sundew from the grow space and keep it near me until I spot the little bugger again and then wave it's tentacles at it and the minute the sundew grazes them it's over hah! Since I'm talking about sundews anyway (ugh more text, I know my posts are really wordy and you guys probably hate it lol) my seedlings from like...a month ago sprouted. I was worried they wouldn't sprout since it's winter and my room is on average 65 degrees (upper 60s under the lights) and it would be too cold to sprout. Plus not only that while giving them their first watering I accidentally sprayed one with lightly fertilized aquarium water that I reserve for my other plants and when I realized my mistake I was like, "Oh shit I hope these things grow." But yeah, they both have little drosera seedlings although they're are more aliciae than spatulata (I think the spatulata is the one I sprayed with the aquarium water) but I'm happy I got any at all. They're starting to get their carnivorous leaves and I would get a picture of them if I could but they're so tiny and they blend in with the sphagnum moss so well even I have trouble spotting them and question whether they are really there or not. Right now I've just started acclimating them but I'm taking it slow since I don't want to lose them. I love looking at them everyday and once they grow up nice and big I can give back my cousin's capensis back haha. Well that's it for now sorry I wrote so much text but I just thought I'd share. Happy growing everyone~

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I'm so angry with myself. The flower spike on my odontoglossum/oncidium finally started dying. So since I never repotted it when I got it I decided to do so because the the medium started to look like wet peat whenever I watered it. I decided to divide and repot it (even though I have no room left orz) and only after I basically ripped out some roots and broke it apart at the natural breaks, while I was repotting this did it hit me that it wasn't just a new growth (which I thought it was at first) but a FLOWER SPIKE! Ugh if only I noticed sooner I would've at least left more roots on it than I did... Pleasseee give me lots of lovely long lasting blooms again.... Fffff I messed up haha oh god....

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Help I've fallen in love with the paph's mottled leaves! D:

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I found this adorable little oncidium at the store today. I'm pretty sure it's a twinkle but as for which one who knows. It's in bad need of repotting but it sent up another bloom spike so I'll just have to deal with the ugly broken down sphagnum for now...