Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Setting up Hoyas, 1 by tropicbreeze

tropicbreeze wrote:
Well, I'm back home again. First thing I did was to check the Hoyas. Last time home I decided they were getting watered too much for the dry season, the automatic irrigation comes on morning and evening. Being too big a job to run a separate line to them I put in one of those battery operated timers. It's set to 72 hours, so it turns on every 3 days. The important thing was to get the timing right, it had to coincide with the time that station of the automatic irrigation program was on.

When I got back the hoyas were dry. Their 3 day cycle for watering should have been the night before but I noticed the water pressure was too low, one of the joints had sprung. After repairing that (and waiting another 3 days) it came on like clockwork. Means they get 1 watering for every 6 they used to get.

There wasn't a real lot of progress in growth but no negatives either. Weather has been up and down. Earlier on the minumums got down to about 13C (days about 30C). Then settled back to minimums 16C to max. 32c. Last few days minimums have been 19/20C to max. 34C. I guess the Hoyas will know when real growth should start.

This is the current state of affairs:

H walliniana - 2 small new leaves after weeks of nothing.

H cv 'Gold Star' - small shoot has developed into leaves

H cumingiana - keeping on growing slowly

H aff clemensiorum - still no indication of growth

H sussuela 'Bamaga' - still only small start of new shoot

H sp. 'Kapit Borneo' - still no indication of growth

H mindorensis - still no indication of growth

H megalaster - new fine shoot

H ciliata - still growing well

H macgillivrayi - still no indication of growth

H sussuela 'McIlwraith Range' - still no indication of growth

Photo: I like the leaf of H. aff clemensiorum, even if it hasn't shown any growth.