Re: Balden's Kaleidoscope Concern

[Sandy4453]

Hi Pilot. I'm really glad to have read this thread. Interesting to me what you're up against with your Baldan's Kaleidoscope. I've got quite a few Kaleidoscopes, some peloric and this year, a local nursery near me had a huge inventory of them which I gladly purchased! (Baldan's nursery is here in Fla.) In all, I've got close to 90 Phals now and out of all of them, the Kaleidoscopes have shown the most stress, the least progress and overall, biggest declines. I lost 3 this summer...just died and I still can't figure out why. I attribute it to just bad, unhealthy over breeding/growing at the nurseries. I noticed that there were more peloric Kaleidoscopes than the others and while I love peloric, it's written that this can be caused by stress while growing, don't know for sure though.

I've also got a couple of other hybrids that lost more than just the typical 1-at-a-time bottom leaves, after a root clean up and re-pot once the blooms were spent....4 leaves in fact and those are doing very well in spite of the amount of leaf loss though, it's not typical to lose that many at once.

Don't keep mine in s/h like you. I use bark, spagh., c.h.c.

I've done a lot of wondering about these Kaleidoscopes and suspected that the ones that made it in mass quantities to the local nurseries (and went for $5) were not in as pristine, healthy condition as the ones that are sold to the better known stores or directly from the growers, perhaps?