Tropicals & Tender Perennials: It's 8PM - Do you know where your buds are?, 1 by Happenstance

Happenstance wrote:
I've already repotted and split up the last 5 years of growth in the other two tubs of Epis......what a job and I've got pickers in every finger and up and down my arms, even with wearing a long sleeved shirt in the 90F heat!

I was able to get most of them out as intact plants with very few broken leaves. As I worked my way through the pots unwinding the twisted and turned pieces, I found a number of buds that were trapped in the bowels of the pots. Hopefully a few of them will mature and actually bloom. I had marked the different types with tape, but there were pieces that didn't bloom, so I imagine I'll have some to seperate out next year. (Notice my optimism about them blooming next year......they've been brutally removed from their homes of 5 years, so I can only hope that they will bloom again next year.)

My patio now looks like a chaotic nursery for Epis.....don't know how long I can stand it....we all know these are not pretty plants during the 10 months of the year that they just sit and think about blooming. I still have the third tub to do.....hmmmmm, what to do what to do. You can probably see in the image that I used a couple of "grow thru" plant supports in two of the pots. My intent is to try and give them some height and fill in the "lower" layer around the rim of the pot, allowing air to circulate better and hopefully I can get to the snails more easily.

Because the soil level had settled over the last 5 years, there was no way I could even see the soil or the snails....but once I tore them apart it was like a massive snail graveyard. I wonder what the nutritive value of snail shells is? Perhaps that and the fish emulsion was all my Epis needed to be so beautiful. :-)