Hi Bill. I hope you are doing better these days. You must be pretty tired at times and still find the strength to grow your plants and even come here. Koodos to you)

I am ok. It's been a rough road here but hanging on. My plants are ok. I am already spraying them for pests so that when the weather all of a sudden takes a turn for the colder, I mean 50's at night, in they will come.

This year I am not risking the rot on any of them and they are all small enough to enjoy inside when in flower. Some are budding up finally. They just LOVE the sunlight that is for sure.

Bill, I threw out many common plants to make room for the ones I like most. I am tired of having little room and too many to care for and too many for worry about pests.

I also will keep protected higher zoned plants that can handle frost in my greenhouse which I decided not to heat anymore. It was costing me over 400 a month for the electric bill. So I am going to keep all my plants inside now under lights which I hope costs me a lot less.

What are you up to these days?

When will your plants come inside? Are you spraying for pest in advance?

How you feeling?

Not looking forward to the long nights and cold!

Mike

Mike, I just mixed up some spray the other day and will begin the routine end of this week. I used neem oil, dawn and water.

My GH is also unheated. I'll shut the door and vents when the nights get cooler. Usually sometime late September or so everything will begin coming back inside. Then like you, the bug wars begin! I lose use of one room too, since it gets the most light, so it gets cram packed with plants. I spread a plastic drop cloth on the floor, and the wire shelves go on that. This way, if I spill water, which I usually do, it'll stay on the cloth and add to the humidity. Typically, the humidity in the room is about 30%, very low, but everything I've tried, including buying and using a humidifier, hasn't seemed to work.

I wish I could keep them outside year round, but it's way too expensive to heat a greenhouse.

The pic is what I think is publicalyx Hawaiian purple. It's covered in ants lapping up the nectar. It also has a very nice smell in the evenings too.

Stay well my friend.

Hello Friend! Always great to hear from you. I don't have any hoya flowers here. Well nummuraloides, but that doesn't really count since it blooms all the time and it's inside.

Outside I have one Krinkle 8 that is happy, a small Australis that is growing like a nut outside, and one Krimson Princess that had terrible mealybug infection. I'm not even sure I will bring that one back inside. I may just take some cuttings from it and toss the rest. I hate to do that but it has been plagued by the mealy forever.

Not much else going on here. The nights are getting cooler so I feel the pressure of Fall coming. I have a lot of other houseplants outside that will need to come back in soon.

Hi Kyra, good to hear from you also. Don't give up on the mealy infestation just yet. Treat it for the next few weeks and hopefully it will recover. I hate to see mature plants discarded, so I do everything in my power to salvage them.

On a different note, I purchased a callistophylla cutting from the web. It was (past tense) a single cutting. I put it in my prop box, high humidity and bottom heat. It sighed once or twice and gave up the ghost! I never had that happen before. I have always wanted one too because of the leaf structure. It was in coco peat and pearlite, moist, exactly like I've done every other cutting. ☹️ Oh well, back to browsing the web for another plant. I think this time I will probably purchase a small rooted plant. We'll see.

Glad to hear from you. I hope all is well for you lately too. Since I can't get out, I enjoy these conversations.

Enjoy your plants. Ttyl....

Bill, I don't have callistophylla or I would send you another cutting. I do have a nicely rooted parasitica pink cutting available. I'd be happy to send it your way as a consolation prize!

Thank you, that's very generous, but no need. I will probably hold off now till spring. Spring, and seeing all the plants starting to put on new growth, gives me something to look forward to. In the mean time, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward.

You stay healthy and well.

Hullo! I have been reading many of your past posts and was surprised to see activity! I have just started growing hoyas and am enjoying exploring the genus. I hope that I’ll have a flower before two years! If not I’ll enjoy the beautiful leaves. Any easy bloomers y’all could recomend? Cheers everyone!

Welcome aboard. There's a wealth of knowledge on here so I think you'll be very happy. No need to wait two years either since given the right conditions a lot of hoyas will bloom the first year.

A reliable bloomer, and one that blooms in a few months from a couple node start, is Hoya multiflora. It just loves to bloom and is an easy one to maintain since it's bushy as opposed to vining, so it behaves itself well. It also like a lot of water since it has thinner leaves. It does drip a lot of nector though so don't put it over anything that would be ruined by sticky nectar.

Best of luck to you and stay well.....

Hi @Bill M.!!!!! I would recommend getting a rooted callistophylla from UPT. They do a great job with packing even in winter. Unfortunately it is sold out right now but keep checking. Their plants are healthy and also offer live plants arrival guarantee. https://www.unsolicitedplanttalks.com/products/hoya-callistophylla?_pos=1&_sid=3b8310c16&_ss=r

Hope you are doing well. We had a nice break from the heat for about a week, but now it’s so hot and humid here. I am ready for fall.

Here are a couple pics…enjoy your Sunday!

waiting on this one to bloom

Plants have taken over my home office 😂

Take care and stay well 👋 ✌️🖖

Well Time, I originally wrote a long comment, hit the wrong key and it's now floating somewhere in cyberspace!

Your plants look great, so neat and compact. Mine look like the wild man of Borneo! Mainly because I don't have the heart to cut them! I made a few diy trellises that I wrapped them around, but they still look "unkempt"!

Thanks for the suggestion, I will be sure to check them out. I did order, a few weeks ago, some clippings. The only one of course, which died was the callistophylla. I didn't hold much hope for it in the first place, as it was one dessicated leaf on a tiny scraggly vine. Sadly, it failed.

Today though my minnibelle bloomed. Someone on here helped me ID the plant last year, and now that it's bloomed the ID proved correct. Whoopie.

You stay well my friend.

Here's minni in all her glory....

And one more

@Bill M. thank you! Most of my plants are smaller and fit nicely on the bookcases. Not sure what I am going to do when they grow. Lol. Your minibelle is beautiful!!

Tika, I have a small hobby GH the plants reside in during the summer. It's unheated, so in another month or so they'll be coming back inside.

Last night I went to the GH, and even from about 6 feet from the open door, I could smell the fragrance. Walking inside it was pure heaven. Extremely fragrant and filled the air. It was even stronger than my lacanosas when they bloom. I can only hope it will do that inside this winter under lights.

As for your plants, when they start throwing up vines is when the problem starts. Some of these plants grow faster than Jack's magic bean vine!

Good luck with yours ....

Bill, I know how that is. I just love it. Being able to smell the sweetness from a distance because the house is so much warmer than the air outside. I turned mine into a perennial greenhouse that houses Zone 7 and 8 plants. I buried them in ground so I could still enjoy that greenhouse even in winter with the fragrance of early winter stuff that needs some sort of protection. I even planted a pretty hardy fig tree.

I will not miss heating bill costs keeping that greenhouse heated all winter especially on below 0 days.

400 dollars and more the months of January and February.

One of my Hoya is still in there but the rest are all still outside and on my very bright porch)

I love your idea about putting down a cloth to allow humidity in a room. It will also protect my floor!! You are talking about a tarp, right?

It will be so much easier to water without getting the floors wet)))

Tiki Land and everyone else, WOW. What beautiful plants and set ups))

Mike - I had a fig tree in my GH all this summer. Watered it almost every day. Temps were in the high 90s low 100s some days. Sudden;y one day I went out and poof - all the leaves were yellow. They were dropping like crazy. The little fig (figettes?) all blasted and died too. Now I have a very natural looking trellis for my hoyas to climb on. I was really looking forward to some figs this year too. Bummer :-(

Bill, what do you think happened?? Oh no. I hope it does not happen to mine. Was it planted in ground?

Seems that you and I experience many of the same things with our plants. Very strange.

Did you over winter it in there too?

I will take a pic of what is in mine now and I think with the door closed and a solar pool cover over it, if I keep it heated only into the 30's, they might all do well. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I planted a really nice plant and if I post a link, tell me what you think))

Here you go. These are one of the most fragrant shrubs you can plant and open early in winter of protected in our Zone. There are even people growing them outside in P.A.

Called the Edwarthia or Paper bush.

https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tLP1TdIrzQoK8kzYPQSKEgsSC1SSCotzlAozigqTQIAlWUKMQ&q=paper+bush+shrub&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS964US964&oq=paper+bush+&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j46i512l2j0i512l3j0i457i512j0i512l2.5087j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Mary, welcome on board. It's a great group with a lot of ideas being exchanged. We're looking forward to having you participate. Your plants look great. I guess you grow them outside all year? I'd love to be able to do that! Stay well and looking forward to seeing more pictures soon.

Mike - you're going to cost me a fortune! Aughhhh! Another plant.

Btw, my fig was overwintered in the GH and it was doing great. It's in a huge pot above ground. One morning, poof. Naked! ☹️

I am in the Washington DC area.  I have most of my well established Hoyas/Dischidias outside and they are doing great.  I will leave them outside until temperature is above freezing.  Some of my hoyas/ orchids benefit from a cold period to flower.   Hoya linearis and Retusa are an example.

@Mary S welcome! Love your pics!! Is the first pic an elliptica? Also what is the big one in the tree. Wow!

Hey gang.

Brought in all of my plants the other day (have some inside too-those that aren't Hoyas). Landlady loves the look of the big picture window in the living room all packed with plants.

Any plant buying will have to wait, as I'm struggling financially. It's very difficult living these days, even with roommates. I'm working a lot, trying to make up for a negative bank account. Hard to enjoy myself with hobbies if there's no money to put into them. I need a sugar daddy LOL.

Happy that it's October, one of my favorite months of the year. Second autumn and winter approaching here in Colorado. I'm loving it here, but I really am not what we as a society call "happy". Content, yes, but happy, meh.

Brad AKA Moonwolf (half hearted howl)

Hi Brad! Sorry to hear of your tribulations. I had high hopes for you here in sunny Colorado. But I know what you mean about living these days is hard, especially when housing here is so expensive. I have two twenty-something sons and they both still live at home. Because frankly, there just isn't anywhere they can afford. I hope things get better for you. You deserve to be happy rather than just content!

My mother even sends me money to help out each month as the jobs I've had since moving here don't really cover the entire amount of rent. I'm on SNAP, too (formerly known as food stamps), so that helps, but taking an Uber to almost everywhere really adds up. I did open a new bank account with some money a friend paid me and mother darling's check. But that's not available until Friday. Tonight's payday (we get paid at midnight Monday into Tuesday-gotta love the restaurant biz), so hopefully that'll buy me some time until Friday. Thankfully, my utilities are included in my rent, unlike my last place in Arvada (I'm over here in Westminster, now). Anyway, sorry to sound depressed. I've been dealing with a lot and it's hard not having the support group IRL.

They never told us growing up would be so difficult. Hard to find joy anymore. But today was a wonderful day at work. Love my new doctor's office in Arvada. Back on some meds that I needed, especially high blood pressure medicine. Off work the next two days, but gonna spend it at home, per usual, as to save money. Funny thing, I moved out of my parents house because I was trapped. Still trapped because I don't have money to go places and explore.

Enough of being a gloomy Gus. Hope you're all doing okay.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

Hi everyone, 

Brought in most my plants, left orchids and some of the smaller rhipsalis out until the temp reaches just above freezing.  I wanted to leave my H. Linearis out a bit longer, but it is full of bloom and l wanted to enjoy it. Linearis is my pride and joy.

Mary, your linearis is really impressive! It's one I've always wanted to try again. I had a couple of small clippings someone sent me a few years ago, but they never rooted. I see plants such as yours and it makes me want to try them again. What type of care are you giving it?

Stay well and keep posting. We all love seeing the pictures and interacting with one another.....

Hi Bill, Linearis is one of the easiest hoyas for me. It likes cooler temperatures to set flowers.  Don't let it dry out. l water it through every week. Use orchid fertilizer with the water and as a foliar spray. It roots really well in water.

Mary, that was part of my problem I guess. I tried rooting it in pearlite and soil. I'll purchase another small plant and try it again.

Thanks for the input. Stay well my friend....

Mary, that is one of the prettiest I have ever seen)

How do you keep the pests off of that plant, especially mealie??

I scares me to know they can hide in that plant!!

Mike

Hi Mike, l use bioadvanced systemic granules and l use horticultural soap as a spray once a month.

Mary, I too use the granules and also sprayed with neem oil prior to bringing them inside. Neem oil is really stinky however, so I can't use it indoors. What horticultural soap do you use and do you use it indoors? Odorless?

I also find, that now that my plants are inside, due to the low humidity, they are drying out faster indoors than outside! Looks like they'll need to be watered almost as frequently inside as they were outside. Do you find the same thing with your indoor plants?

Stay well and keep grow'n 'em....

Hi Bill. How are you doing these and your plants?

Winter is approaching fast and I don't think I want it. (

I was thinking the same thing?

Bill, mines dry out fast too but not due to the indoor warmth because still keep my windows open. I think the roots are so healthy, they just drink as if they are outside. I have a bucket in my room and I soak them in the water until all the bubbles stop coming up or the mixes wet unevenly. Some have grown so well they are root bound and the mix is barely enough.

Or, for some the mix is hard and i should of transplanted sooner.

Mary, what soap is it? I will order some too)

Once a month is a great plan even if you don't see pests. I will start that as a preventative so that nothing catches me off guard. Thank you

Mike