MY HONOHONO ORCHIDS ARE BEGINNING TO BLOOM

All my life I've never been able to obtain a  subsequent bloom from Honohono and Cattleya Orchids.  They normally dried up and died, until I moved to 15 Craigside.  To quote from the first time they actually bloomed in my apartment:

This time I redesigned the growth environment by having layers of perlite, sphagnam moss and fir bark, into which I placed the orchid plant.  This system provides reasonably airy conditions.  However, there are holes at the bottom of that green tub.  There is a larger black tub where I regularly fill with some water so that some rise to the orchid roots by osmosis.

I keep the temperature at 75 F in the daytime and 70 F at night, save for those periods when I travel, when the air conditioning is usually turned off, and the room zooms up into the 80's.

I returned from a three-week trip late last week and asked the staff here to place two inches of water into those tubs once a week.  I think that orchid plants bloom for two reasons.  Certainly under optimal conditions on an annual basis.  However, I suspect that they also bloom when threatened by drowning and higher temperatures, which occur when I'm on travel.

Here is a photo I took today (with the 18December2019 Star-Advertiser front page):

Honohonos generally bloom from late February into April in Hawaii, although the industry has found a way to get them to blossom into the early summer months. December 18 is a record for me, which doesn't say much because this might be only my second crop.  Does anyone out there in Hawaii also have buds in December?  I doubt it.

My 2012 posting on Honohono and Cattleya Orchids (left) for some reason ranks in the top 15 (see column to the right).  That was before I moved into 15 Craigside.  The first year here, 2015, I wrote on the 61st Annual Kunia Orchid Show (right photo shows Honohonos in my Manoa Campus Office).

It was probably 2015 when I first began to place orchids in this indoor environment.  In 2016 I went on a two-month around the world trip:

I asked Daryl, the maintenance manager, if he could arrange for the person cleaning my room to each Friday add two inches of water to three tubs where I placed a few herb plants and several orchids.  When I returned, there were ten buds of cattleya orchids in two pots and a blooming sunburst 

Earlier this year, my Honohonos began to bloom for the first time in my life, and in January:

Then in June, another bloom:

My indoor system for growing orchids clearly can still be improved.  But this has been a successful first step, even if contrary to conventional practice, as the roots are always moist and the Honohono plant grows vertically up, instead of down.

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All three major markets broke their all-time records, the Dow rising 31 to 28,267.  Parts of the economy are improving and their is some relief on the metastable Trump-China trade matter.

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