Before "selfing" the plant, you should consider what you'd be getting into and whether you really want to get that deep into it.
Orchid seed in nature has to be infected by a fungus in order to germinate. In "captivity" they need to be sown onto a nutrient-bearing substrate - often agar-based - in a sterile environment. In the flask, it may take as much as six months for the seed to germinate, and after they have actually begun to form protocorms and then later begin cell differentiation, they are then replated onto a different nutrient-bearing substrate, again in a sterile environment, and then they are grown on for as much as a few years before the tiny seedling can be removed from the flask and placed in community pots of many seedlings.
After spending a year or two in that community pot, the seedlings might be big enbough for individual tiny pots. Then you have to grow them onward and upward, and in the case of a cane-type dendrobium being grown in the home, it would probably be several years - ten maybe, from pollination - before they will be large enough to bloom.
I do some breeding, but I harvest the capsules and shoot them onto a lab for culturing, typically getting back something in the neighborhood of 1000-5000 seedlings to raise...
|