Venting (with a brown paper bag)

[Paul]

Originally Posted by SundayGardener

I would say my failure rate with succulents is 95%. Doesn't matter if I ignore them, they're doomed the minute I bring them home.I live close to an excellent source of wide variety of alpine garden plants, including succulents, and I have decent outdoor rock garden conditions, but no. I just stay out of the alpine garden tents now when browsing.

Sometimes it helps to be prepared for attrition. I really had the bug bad last year and I planted several hundred bulbs. I think I'll be lucky to see 50 bloom. That's accounting for chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, winter melt possibly causing rot, and overall unhelpful weather with rapid cycling from deep freezes to thaws, and also early on there wasn't sufficient snow cover to prevent soil heaving. Honestly, it was not cheap and it was a ton of work to plant them. but if I get a few years of spring blooms it will make the months of April and May so much better for me.

You might try addressing some of those issues in one of the other sections of this forum. (Not a criticism -- just a helpfully intended comment. The collective "hive brain" here might be able to help you but I don't want to take this thread too far off track. Also I know of a couple other forums that you might want to visit where you might be able to get useful input.)

[charlesf6]

Originally Posted by SundayGardener

You had the orchid for 17 months, is that correct? Do you mind my asking what might have happened, or changed?

15 mos. in all. Henry had really came along last summer big time bulging new roots out of his upper stem rapidly and old roots getting healthier daily, leaves getting green & nice and healthy and then unexpectedly a spike started around Nov. last year and by Christmas Henry was about to bloom & boy he sure did handsomely and very bold.
To my dismay arriving home from work about two weeks ago I just noticed his roots had seemingly shrunk, just didn't look correct. It all went downhill rapidly thereafter.

Congratulations also on your orchids that are doing well!

thanks!