Mega Bloom Bloom Count

I received an email from a concerned orchid grower today. My blog has an orchid page on it. One of her concerns was her orchid pots. The only orchid I have in an orchid pot is my mega bloomer.

The first season it bloom I was so excited when it started blooming and counted how many it had so far frequently throughout it's blooming cycle. Now I look at the spikes and shoots after it has finished blooming and count the number blooms it had during it's entire cycle. When it hit fifty one year I was in total awe. Mom told me not to expect it the next year. The following year it had sixty some and that was with the secondary spike broken off before it had finished blooming. This year I was really happy to see that it was mature enough to have more than one side shoot.

The secondary spike broke off again this past bloom cycle. It gets a bit of rough treatment including the young cat deciding he just had to share that bit of window ledge. But the secondary spike decided it wasn't done for yet, and it grew a side shoot. My determined orchid had a main spike with two side shoots, and a broken secondary spike with a side shoot! It's obviously loving it's home window.

How many blooms did it have? drum roll please.........................................





One hundred and twenty-two !!!!!!!!!!!

Honest! It did!!!

It has several blooms at one time over the course of five and a half months, and they are small blossoms so it's not an "Oh my gosh LOOK at that display!" phenomena.

What's sad is that I tend to take pictures to illustrate a talking point on my Orchid Page (tab at top) so I don't have any good pictures of it. Here is one from early in it's bloom cycle to give you an idea of what it looks like. It bloomed, struggled with orchid blast, and then bloomed nicely.

Mega Bloomer

My Orchids

A few weeks ago I gave away an orchid. 

Going to a new home with a new bloom spike and fertilizer

A previous blooming

It was the first orchid for the girl it went to, so I decided she could use some guidance. I certainly would have appreciated it with my first orchid.  I wrote down all of the bits of knowledge that I have gleaned over the past few years and organized it alphabetically by subject.

I am told without pictures the paper was seven pages when printed and I've added to it since! So I know more than I realized, which is always a nice surprise.

Putting my orchid page together took much MUCH longer than I would have guessed. hmmm...I really should illustrate this term. Look through all of my pictures. Well guess what? I've never taken a picture of a node or a crown or a _____. Out comes the camera. Download to laptop. hmmm...Adjust lighting. Download. Oh good, that worked! PhotoShop. Upload to blog. Caption.

Click on the tab at top to be taken to my orchid page and left click on the pictures for a larger image.