Sharry Baby!

My Oncidium Sharry Baby has done very well this year. There are two new pseudobulbs. One made a single spike, and the other has made two. They won't all be in bloom at the same time; the first spike has already faded and we are on to the second. The third will come much later - it hasn't even started to branch yet. But I'm just as happy that the spikes are sequential. This plant puts out a strong vanilla fragrance that fills the front of the house. This way, I get to enjoy that for many months. The plant is growing in LECA, those little brown expanded clay pellets. I wait until the pot just goes dry; i.e. no more water in the reserve outer pot. Then I run R.O. water through the LECA for a minute or two, and pour maybe 3/8" of MSU fertilizer into the outer pot. I make up the MSU to around 0.50 mS/cm conductivity, and adjust the pH to around 6.0 using a Hanna combination meter.

Here is a close-up of one of the flowers. There are just over 100 flowers on the spike, and the first spike was about the same. If the third spike does as well, I will have gotten around 300 flowers out of this plant. Very impressive!