Bloomed After 4 Years

My friend, Ate Rose, gave me a bunch of cacti and succulents 4 years ago. She gave me some tips how to care for them and I watched videos how best to care for them. She told me to re-pot them, so that's what I did 4 years ago. 

There were two gymnocalycium saglionis originally and I think I gave one to my Mom a week after I re-potted them. The other one that was left with me grew and I didn't even bother re-potting it. I would just give it some fertilizer when I remembered it. 

Gave some to my Mom :)

A month ago, I gave all the plants in the pocket garden some rice water with orange peels and then let Miggy do the watering the cacti and succulents weekly. I checked the plants early this month and was surprised to see something coming out of the gymnocalycium saglionis. My friend from Cebu pointed out that it was a flower. 

Oh! I didn't know that this particular cacti can produce flowers. I ignored the cacti as usual (it doesn't like that much attention) and told Miggy the other day to check if it already bloomed. He sent a photo to me and it looked like it was about to bloom. 

I checked the next day and was surprised to see it had bloomed! It took 4 years! I guess randomly giving it some diluted fermented rice water with orange peels encouraged it to bloom. My friend also said to put it under bright light the whole day. It gets morning sun and afternoon sun, so I guess it's just on the right spot. 

I'm really happy about this achievement because TBH I failed a lot on cacti and succculents. I usually overwater them, but I've managed to correct that and here we are today, haha. 

How's your garden?

#BeKind #StaySafe

Successfully Propagated Mom's Bougainvillea

I've been trying to propagate Mom's bougainvillea trees. She was really proud to have several variants of it and told me she just propagated them from cuttings. I would always catch her trimming them in the afternoons. 

I asked her once how she would propagate bougainvillea. She told me, just cut a step and stick it in soil. She had a magical green thumb and could grow anything. She mentioned though that the white variety was the hardest to grow.

Everytime I visit my childhood home, I take a few cuttings of the different colors. They were always blooming, so I'd just cut the stem with flowers. I tried it several times and followed online tutorials. I even got river sand to see if it would help. River sand is expensive though, so I'd mix it with loam soil. 

I managed to successfully grow four pots. I have no idea what variants I managed to grow. I've been waiting for flowers to come out and one finally bloomed one! I guess it likes rice water because I gave it some last week. 

Ohhh! I'm so excited! It's just one flower for now, but there are tiny ones growing. I made another batch to grow to make sure I complete all the colors. I'm doing this because I'm not sure if the tree will survive the construction. 

Cheers to more gardening achievements!

#BeKind #StaySafe