My name is Karma. I live in Gothenburg, Sweden and work professionally as an Art Director in advertising. I am passionate about growing orchids, and do my best to do it well in a 2 bedroom flat...
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 I have two very nice Masdevallia tovarensis orchids. Both of which are in bud right now. One bud opened early in December and it was beautiful!! But the rest are just sitting there, waiting. Waiting for what!?! Every day go in there looking, hoping, waiting. But nothing.
I finally figured out that I think they want more humidity in order to deliver the big price. We have had an unusually cold winter here, so I have actually had to turn on the heater in the orchid room (very low) for the first time ever. So needless to say the relative humidity has plummeted. So, to cater to my darling M. tovarensis I devised a plan. I cranked up the humidifier and ran it solid all night and every other hour during the day for a whole week – with the door closed.
That sure did the trick! The RH in the room hovered around 70-80% and I could practically see the buds swelling. They were loving it! …but the wallpaper did not. It finally gave up and began to bubble in places, despite the four coats of paint on top of them. My dear patient husband finally put his foot down. Can’t say I blame him really – but what about my fuzzy Masdevallias?
That just made me double my efforts looking for a suitable terrarium to convert to a cool vivarium for these guys… and today I think I might have found it. More to come…
 This is a warm growing miniature epiphyte from Ecuador found at elevations of 200 to 500 m. It is a small orchid, the fan measures about 7 cm across and the flowers are only about 0,7 cm a piece. But what she lacks in size she makes up for in abundance. It was quite exciting to follow the development this season, with more flower spikes appearing pretty much daily, eventually producing 11 spikes all together. Impressive!
  I have not been able to find much info on this species, but the genus is pretty large (50 species) and grows accross tropical America. The name (or-NITH-o-SEF-a-lus) actually stem from paleontology. Naming an animal (a flying dinosaur) thought to be intermediate between a mammal and a bird, Ornithocephalus basically mean “bird head.” I grow mine mounted in the warm vivarium under medium light. Evidently this is the right way to grow this little gem.
However… looking at the closeup of the flowers and comparing it to other photos I have seen of this species (t.ex. IOSPE), I am pretty sure this is not really a manabina. The flowers on my plant are much more, hmmm… expressive, and quite beautiful I might add. Mine comes from a reputable grower, Orchids & More, and it was labelled Ornithocephalus manabina. It could of course have been mislabeled, unfortunately this is not uncommon in orchid cultivation.
 I used to think of zip ties as a marvel of modern invention, a convenience so brilliant I’d put it right up there with duct tape. But not today. I hang one of my light fixtures from a shelf about half way down in my window. Today when I came home one of the zip ties had broken, not slipped out of the lock, but snapped in half! The light fixture was hanging from one hook pointing straight at a few of my vanda at a distance of about 2 centimeters, and by the looks of things it had been like this for hours. My beautiful Ascocenda Princess Mikasa Blue was badly burnt on the tips of two leaves and the little Trudelia alpina had a couple of singed tips as well…
I suppose I should be grateful. Had the second zip tie snapped at the force of one side falling, all my little flask babies below would have been smashed. Had the fixture landed face down, the survivors would have been barbecued. Still, it is hard to feel grateful when you look at the irreparable damage on my Princess.
 This miniature orchid from the Trichoglottis Alliance was first described by Schlechter in 1913. It hails from the hills and lower montane forests of the Greater Sunda Islands where it grows at elevations up to about 1550 meters. The flowers form small clusters on a very short inflorescence and they are small, about 15 mm, but has great detail. I love the “fringe” on the lip, it looks almost like a beard. Check out this amazing drawing of the flower from 1914.
It is a warm growing epiphyte that is loving life in my warm vivarium as it is blooming almost constantly. I grow mine in high humidity (80-90%), at warm temperatures 24 (winter) to 28 degrees (summer) and under medium/high light. At least in these conditions I would say it is very easy to grow and flower. I warmly recommend it. I definitely want more of these little guys in my warm viv.
 It has been quite exciting to follow the development of the Prosthechea cochleata seed pod over the past few weeks. It has been swelling rather quickly and it has been a thrill to watch as it is my first pollination attempt. Then things started going wrong… The new bud forming on this years new bulb started turning brown, I did not see any reason for this to happening then, and I was a bit confounded as to why. To save the bud inside the protective sheath I had to cut it out, and so far I think it might have worked, the bud is still developing. I thought all was well, but then – disaster!
  False spider mites! Darn!! I think this is why the sheath turned brown and now I noticed a few mites on my precious seed pod. My heart just sank… I know how hard it is to get rid of false spider mites, and the prognosis for my pod was not looking good. I quickly quarantined the cochleata and started going over the rest of the orchid collection, plant by plant with a magnifying glass. Four hours later I had identified one Dendrobium hybrid, and four Paphiopedilum. The Paphiopedilum were not that bad actually, I saw one, maybe two mites per plant, but the Dendrobium was worse. Since it was not a very valuable plant, aside from the fact that my dear father had given it to me, it went straight into the trash (sorry dad). The rest I decided to fight for.
I do not like using poison unless absolutely necessary, so first I pulled the orchids out of their pots and rinsed them thoroughly under a heavy stream with water. First line of defense really, you can usually wash a lot of them off. Then I let them soak in a heavy soap bath bare root. The idea is that the soap breaks the surface tension of the water and the mites simply drown. I discarded the growing media and washed out all the pots well too with soap just to be safe, even though these guys usually do not go down in the media. I let them dry on newspaper over night, but since I still saw a few mites on the cochleata under the magnifying glass the next day the whole lot went into another soap bath.
Third day inspection. One mite discovered on the seed pod of the cochleata. Damn persistent little fu#!”ers… Time to employ another method. Some people have success using a product used for fruit trees, but the ingredients for this product is primarily natural oil. So I soaked paper towels in canola oil and wiped down all the green parts of the plants, then let them rest over night. The idea here is that the oil suffocates the mites. The next day I rinsed off the plants really well under running water. Mainly to get rid of excess oil so the leaves could breathe and not suffocate. No mites seen on inspection.
Fifth day inspection. One darn mite still seemed to linger on the seed pod of the cochleata. I probably should give up on this plant, but I did not have the heart to do it with the seed pod and new bud coming. It is such a faithful plant too, blooms almost constantly. Time to raise the bar and actually use poison! I placed all my quarantined plants in a large plastic bag then sprayed them all with Provado Plus, a systemic pesticide specially developed to also take out spider mites. Then I sealed the bag over night, hoping that the fumes would take out any stragglers.
Big surprise, the poison worked. Sixth day inspection – no mites. Seventh day inspection – no mites. Unfortunately it worked a little bit too good… the seed pod is history. It is really sad, but hopefully I can save the plant. There are good days and bad days when you are growing orchids, this is one of the latter.
 This lovely little orchid is blooming now for the fist time. I really like the shape of the flowers and the slight sheer interior. Mine has quite a bit more yellow in the color than other pictures I have seen of this species. I bought another Masdevallia (M. rolfeana) at the same time from the same grower that was mislabeled. Could this one be mislabeled too? But perhaps not, it absolutely lives up to its name.
The name descendens, or the Descending Masdevallia, refers to the whay that the inflorescence grows. I almost missed this first flower all together because it was growing straight down into the pot! I had to gently dig it out of the moss and place it over the edge of the pot. A rescue expedition quickly ensued and two more inflorescences were saved, but they will need another two weeks or so before they flower.
This Masdevallia originally hail from Ecuador where it grows at elevations of 1300 to 1500 meters. It is small in size, and it can handle intermediate growing conditions quite well. I grow mine on the windowsill in sphagnum moss. The pendulous flowers are only about 2 cm long and narrow bell shaped. They grow on a very short inflorescence – that stubbornly insists on gowning straight down – just like the name says.
 There is something tragic, yet very graceful, when the orchid flower has done its time. It slowly begins to wilt and finally become a memory (or a mummy) of its former beauty. Yet it lingers, refusing to give up the right to exist, to remember its former grandeur. Sometimes I almost like this process more than buds opening, in a macabre, Edgar Allan Poe sort of way… exploring the theme of death. Although I study flowers, not beautiful women… at least in this tale.
 It has become a bit of a tradition to have all the vandas tag along on our vacations, so I figured I would post a photo of this year’s group. Since I grow my vandas bare root they get a bath every day (or every other day now when it is a little darker and cooler). Princess Mikasa came with us skiing last xmas, and the whole gang came out on summer vacation for a few weeks this summer. This holiday season we went out to the coast for a couple of weeks, and of course the vanda gang came too. As long as we don’t leave the country I suppose this will tradition will work out ok…
The logistics behind leaving for extended periods of time are getting more and more complex with so many orchids to care for. Believe it or not, it’s hard to find babysitters who are willing to water nearly 200 orchids… Luckily most of them do fine without care for a week at a time – but not really much longer than that. This time I went back into town to water once in the middle of our stay and it worked out ok. Those windowsill orchids that usually get water twice a week can tolerate a dry week once in a while. The mounted orchids in the warm vivarium are usually misted every day, but when I leave I fill humidity trays in the bottom of the viv with a few centimeters of water to ensure that humidity stays really high. With the trays full of water the RH almost max out at 100% and the mounted orchids stay hydrated longer. It is important to have good air circulation when you do this however.
 I want to wish you all a wonderful xmas and a very nice holiday season. I hope the coming year will bring many wonderful orchid experiences.
Thanks for a fantastic year!
Love, Karma
 The same lovely Prosthechea cochleata that I just pollinated have also been working on a new bud on this years’ growth. I thought it would wait until spring to bloom since it just finished blooming on the previous years’ bulb. But, this little lady had other plans, and she is facing some complications.
For some reason the bud started turning brown a few weeks ago, and the rot (I assume this is what it is) have been slowly, very slowly, spreading down towards the bud inside the protective sheath. I have no idea why this might be happening, but I wanted to wait as long as I could before doing something about it. Hoping that the flower spike inside would have enough time to develop before it was time for an emergency cesarean section.
  
Last night, the time had come. We are going away for a few days over the holidays so since I cannot keep a close eye on it I could not wait any longer. I cut the browning tip off with a sterile blade, making the cut with as wide of a margin as I could, then powdered the tip with some cinnamon. I had hoped that the rot would stop and the bud could get a chance to emerge on its own, but already this morning the cut edge looked a bit suspicious. So I carefully peeled open the sheath to expose the developing bud. I hope the spike will continue to grow.
With both conception and this forceful delivery this little lady has had a very busy few weeks. I hope she will still talk to me in the morning. Sometimes I wish we had a baby-cam for when we leave town at critical moments like these…
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