Blooms!

Hoya lasiantha finally bloomed for me earlier this year... I had to spray it every day during its last few weeks and I never thought I would see blooms... I was lucky!

I came home one day to a gorgeous smell. I knew one of the Hoyas had flowered, but which one? I discovered that it was Hoya carnosa!

And finally Hoya retusa. I sadly lost the previous plant I had so it gave me great joy to discover my second retusa had started budding. And now I have flowers! Love the uniqueness of this Hoya.

More buds...

The Hoya lasiantha buds seem to get larger every day... we'll see if they get any bigger or fall off as usual!


This is Hoya telosmoides... a new one for me. Quite excited to see if this one makes it to flowering as well!


Now this is Hoya australis ssp australis. This one almost always flowers around autumn, so it's very bizarre to see it bud at this time of the year. I reckon it's due to the funny weather we've had this year - it was really hot and sunny for ages in April, and now it's got darker, so the australis may be reacting to this. This one is usually quite reliable so I hope to see blooms in a few weeks time.

Try and Try Again...

Well, I'll probably kaibosh it again, but here is the Hoya lasiantha trying to flower once again... the previous peduncles having fallen off once more! Ah well... we will see how far these ones will get!

Must be spring!

So, I was going through the sad process of throwing the Hoyas that hadn't made it through the winter (there are always some, no matter how hard I try not to kill them!). And what should I find to cheer me up?

Oh yes, sweet buds on the Hoya lasiantha! I had a look at it as I was moving some of my Hoyas around and noticed the peduncle had gone dark. I wasn't very surprised about this as it came to me last year with buds which sadly blasted not long before they should have opened. This has happened to me several times with lasiantha so again doesn't surprise me. But, instead of a dying peduncle, I have buds! Will they make it this time? We will have to see. Give it a month!
And here is my second suprise:

I've only had this Hoya padangensis for six months, bought at the very end of last year's posting season. I'm really excited about seeing how the flowers develop - I've seen how unusual they are, which is why I bought it to begin with.
So although it is with sadness I said goodbye to some of my Hoyas, I really hope these ones will come through this time and flower for me! :)

The Naughty Corner

Argh how much do I hate mealy bugs? They are a bane in my hoya-growing life. Last year I had a really bad outbreak of root mealy bugs and had to pour some noxious stuff all over my poor plants to try and get rid of the things.

Now I find that they're back on the Hoya carnosa and the Hoya publicalyx "Pink Silver". The tell tale fluffy cotton wool and little grey bugs - Argh! So I was straight away with the methylated spirits trying to get rid of the ones I could see and, as they were outside last year, they had spiders webs all over them so they had to have a good wash too. After that I sprayed them with insecticide (I'm sorry, I know I should be more eco-friendly, but it's the only thing I know that works) and now I'm crossing my fingers that I've got rid of the horrible things for the time being.

And finally, I have to apologise for not updating this blog for a while - I'm now working a lot harder than I used to and when I get home the last thing I want to do is do yet more work on the computer!