Happy August 1st everyone; it is really hard to believe how quickly this summer is slipping away from us. Here is a photo of Hoya sp. Aff. engleriana Vietnam from this morning:

This is a first for me, and could not have happened without putting the plant outside for the summer. I don’t know what pollinated it, but I have about a billion earwigs this year crawling on everything.

I have come to really like this Hoya. It is a pretty slow grower, but when it is time to flower, look out! The blooms are powerfully perfumed as well.

I only started this plant over from cuttings last fall and look at the flower display already!

I am constantly flummoxed as to why I struggle to grow some Hoyas that I used to grow easily in my last home. The only thing that I can really come up with is the water. I was on a tiny community well that serviced about 35 homes, and the only thing added to that water was chlorine. Large commercial water systems like the one that I am on now no longer use chlorine, but moved some time ago to chloramine which does not dissipate quickly like chlorine. I do not believe that my r/o system can filter it out either. I am wondering if some Hoyas are sensitive to it, and possibly the chemical is causing some of my issues.

I have just installed a rain barrel pictured below, and in a short time already have over 100 gallons of water saved. I will report back on how this works out for me at some future time. Fingers crossed!

Being outside in the greenhouse seems to agree with Hoya hanhiae Yellow-Pink this summer as you can seem from the massive flower output!

I started a number of Hoya sp. Buntok (SLM-01) cuttings some of which took and others of which did not. This one surprised the heck out of me by growing a peduncle and flowering. Hoyas never lose their ability to surprise!

All good things must once again come to an end and so it goes with this wonderful and in my opinion much more hardy clone of Hoya undulata. If I was going to try to grow this plant, I would definitely try to seek out this particular one as it just seems much more hardy than the wavy leaved Borneo version.

I have never been able to get any plant grown using leca and passive hydro to last much longer than one year before succumbing to root rot. It requires constant flushing of the media to keep ahead of it, which is way too much work especially when you have most of your plants growing in tents, which make the plants hard to access. I have seen some gorgeous Hoyas grown in leca on Instagram, but I cannot seem to achieve the same results, and it is maddening. So while it worked out in the case of this undulata, I can hardly recommend it as a main course of growing.

The buds seemed to take forever to open but they finally opened on July 5th. There were five flowers with no scent, but with a great deal of beauty. I was pretty happy that I got this plant to flower within one year of owning it.