Spring....so far...

Its been a while since I have had time to sit and write about where we are so far this year...its been a hectic Spring with plants starting to flower in earnest in early March and now the last of them are in bud now, with the last one looking to be the VERY late flowering clone of Pln. chunii that I have, which in previous years I have only remembered about when I find flowers hiding amongst the leave of other plants.

I feel it has been a good Spring so far, the cooler weather has helped stop flowers aborting and last year was a nightmare with the early hot spell causing chaos amongst the plants. I have set some set this Spring so hopefully some new crosses in the pipeline but there is a long way to go.

Seed pod starting to swell

I have been lucky enough to have some people come and visit us during the flowering and it is always nice to chat about plants and growing with others, passing tips and ideas on, learning new things.

The work on the virus testing continues and I am hoping to ship material to a lab in the US in the coming weeks so that they can work on refining the test kits to accurately identify PlFBV as well as PVY (see earlier blogs) so hopefully more news later in the year.

As the greenhouse starts to fill with leaves my thoughts now shift towards the Autumn flowering plants and how they are building up nicely this year, finger crossed...

Leaves everywhere, and for the very observant there is Coelogyne mooreana in there as well

on a side note, I am always interested and on the lookout for new and interesting plants. If you have something that you dont see on my website please drop me a line, I would love to hear about it!

Happy growing

Stu