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Hello Robert,

As much as I love Passiflora, I am limited in my choice of species. Passiflora edulis produces giant crops of delicious Maracuja fruit. I have 3 different species of the Tacsonia group which do well and cope with the hot summers but I do not have their names. Cloud forest plants are impossible here with humidity below the measurable level in summer with our hygrometers.......
Sorry about this off topic contribution.....

...... it needed some gymnastics to take this picture......

Quote from: Robert_Parks on December 14, 2024, 10:08:21 AMMy evergreen Bomareas don't have an off season for blooming...4 of the 5 big ones are going off right now.

Robert
in cool damp San Francisco

Hello Robert,

Wonderful pictures of your Bomarea...... I wish I could grow them here but several attempts failed, they cannot cope with our hot summers....
Thank you for sharing 

Its a few years back but it was exactly the same situation and has lasted for a long time. I had given up hoping when the seed arrived in excellent condition, the portions were generous and germination was very good.
So.... Don't despair 

Troopaeolum tuberosum is a short day plant and comes from high elevations in the Andes. Both factors may explain the sucess and failure in different years.  They will only start to produce tubers after september 21st (Equinoxe) which in general is not enough time to produce big tubers before frost strikes. The high elevation origin means that the plants do not like hot summers. In England the heat problem is not really present so you can see Tropaeolum tuberosum 'Ken Aslett' in full lfower. here in Portugal none of the tuberosum forms perform. The winter growing Chilean ones do well, though.

Quote from: Too Many Plants! on November 19, 2024, 08:39:56 AMAnd on that Velthemia note...

Velthemia Bracteata waking up!

A fun little tidbit on these...I found these years ago at, of all places (which I frequent so I'm pretty certain they only got a pot or maybe 2-3), my local HD! One lone pot.

...also, for a while now I've been wondering if I have these in too much full sun. They often get a bit fried looking.

I grow my Veltheimia capensis in full sun and the border where it grows will be very dry and warm in summer. But the Veltheimia bracteata would not like this. It has a rather short dormancy, I am surprised that yours are only just leafing out now. They grow in dappled shade in a border which is irrigated in summer so the roots will find some moisture. As a pot plant in a cool room Veltheimia bracteata can be virtually evergreen.

Thank you, @Robin Jangle, for this great information on the diversity of the species. 

Love those V. Deasii! They do strike me as V. Deasii, and definitely look different than my Capensis anyway. (Capensis Pics from previous years)

This Veltheimia was purchased as a single bulb from the succulent nursery in Vanrhynsdorp in South Africa in the year 2000. I am not sure if it is Veltheimia deasii but compared to the picture and description at Telos it could well be. I do not know if it is an acknowledged name so I prefer to put a question mark. It does increase by splitting but slowly so. With careful hand pollination it sets very few seeds, the seedlings are very slow to build up, none has got to flowering size so far. It is the first Veltheimia to flower with me.

Hello Bern,

I have never used hydrogen peroxide for my plants. This idea seems odd to me. Hydrogen peroxide is a strong oxidizer. In the medical it is used to clean and disinfect, it removes organic detritus, blood and the like. Or think of bleaching hair.....
It may depend on the concentration but I would worry about causing more damage than good by using this for plants. And how to apply? Water a pot with substrate? For how long would it be active in the substrate? Or rinse bare roots? 

A scene from the narrow border along the terrace of our house. It becomes very hot and dry in summer and I still have to adjust my planting in this very visible ,,premium" location. The top of the stone wall you see behind the Veltheimia is the top of an almost 3 m tall wall which gets full sun in summer, now partly shaded by plants growing at its base. But still the soil in this border becomes very warm. Irrigation with such a warm soil kills the roots of many plants, so there is only very very little water applied by hand in the evenings.
This combination of Veltheimia deasii (?) or capensis with Oxalis Pink Giant, Nerine sarniensi (already over) and a self sown Crocus niveus has proved reliable and is a nice combination with succulents and cacti.

Hello Carlos,

Thank you for sharing your pictures of this interesting habitat. The crocus is very beautiful. It looks as if this place got good rain. (I hope that you are not affected by the terrible flooding in the Valencia area?)
Is this habitat a now fallow cultivated field? 

Hello again, Bern,
What if you would repot one of these plants into fresh substrate and stop fertilizing it? The new substrate should of course contain some nutrients. Are you re-using your substrate? I went back to your initial post and feel that you are fertilizing a lot. I use a soluble fertilizer of similar concentrations but I only apply it about three or maybe four times during the growing cycle and that for pots outdoors which are exposed to our heavy winter rains. I use the recommended concentration and repot every year, not re-using the substrate. With excellent results. Measuring the pH of the water certainly is a good idea, but can you also measure the pH of the substrate? Soluble mineral fertilizers do also influence soil pH to either acidic or alkaline depending on their composition.

Hello Bern,
Having followed this thread and having looked at the picture again another possibility comes to mind. Have you considered magnesium deficiency?
If you google you will see exactly the symptoms: green veins and discoloration in between. You state that you use a fairly concentrated fertilizer but does it contain trace elements? Have you changed the substrate? Have you changed light exposure?
Soil chemistry is a very complex subject and I am not a chemist. But reading that you frequently use a (diluted) concentrated fertilizer there may be a buildup of some components which prevent the uptake of others? Just a thought.
Uli 

Yes, it is Oxalis hirta. A very nice, non invasive plant. A typical winter grower with a dry summer dormancy. If you give it some fertilizer and prevent drying out until around mid May, it will grow much bigger and flower for a long time.

Quote from: Mikent on October 31, 2024, 12:58:37 PMLarge Nerine finally started blooming a few days ago. The inflorescence appeared in late August, I thought it would be blooming early September, but it just hung out until a few days ago when it started to develop some color, then got a few inches longer, and bloomed.

I bought a bag of somewhat desiccated bulbs at a local garden center (well, a handful of bags, but only 1 bag of Nerine bulbs) maybe a month before Covid struck. The bulbs were identified as 'Nerine sarniensis Red,' but who knows if those bagged bulbs are accurately labeled. Anyway, this is the first blooming. They took a few years to recover, then started getting big enough that I was sort of expecting blooms last year. Maybe I'll try moving the pot to our glass (door) enclosed porch for a while at the end of season next year.

The first picture is from a few days ago, it was the second day of flowering. It's a bit deeper pink color in the picture than is accurate, because the sun was shining on the petals, and all I was getting was a white glare instead of pink. I had to block the sunshine with my body while taking the picture which caused the pink to look a few shades darker. The second picture is from today, and is fairly close to the actual color (more gray than sunny today).

To me the flowers look more like Nerine bowdenii. They are easy to distinguish from Nerine sarniensis which has foliage in winter. Nerine bowdenii has summer foliage which dies down with or before flowering and the foliage is green. Nerine sarniensis flowers before the leaves emerge and the foliage has a grayish/bluish color.

Hello @Robin Jangle,

You make an interesting point in saying that winter dormant bulbs will tolerate Mediterranean winter rain. Do you think that I can grow Cyrtanthus falcatus outdoors? It seems to suffer in its big pot. Good drainage would not be a problem but we get quite a lot of rain here in the mountains.....