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 am not an orchid expert by any stretch of the imagination. I can honestly say that I am passionate about growing them, but not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I am good enough to get someone who is a complete neophyte started, and that is about it. But part of that mad orchid passion involves getting folks started. Let me explain.
I have several possibly eccentric behaviors attached to my orchid fascination. The first one is, I love to rescue orchids from the clearance sections of Home Depot, Lowes, and Wal-mart. Perhaps you have seen them there, lonely and pathetic. This stems from a Charley Brown-esque compassion for the underdog plant, (And the fact that I am limited by my pocketbook). There are good and bad facets to this, as I am thrilled when I finally get to see what color the orchid I have bought will be, and have been blessed with spectacular foliage and blooms from these orphans (Only one has never bloomed - a ya). I have also been saddened to be turned away by garden department managers who wouldn't reduce prices on a flat of orchids that are obviously on their way out, and in sore need of nursing.
The other behavior is, standing in the orchid section of the store, soaking in the beautiful flowers, and striking up conversations with other folks who wander over to do the same. You can tell the ones who have no luck with orchids, with their furtive vaguely embarrassed but envious glances. I have this thing where I like to encourage and coach those folks through the basics of taking one home and trying again. I live in Central Florida, so this isn’t a daft concept. There is nothing finicky or fussy about growing your average orchid here. The average ambient humidity outdoors is only about 145%. Okay, it FEELS like 145%, but is sufficient to keep most orchids pretty happy. It is actually tougher to grow orchids indoors here.
As I said in the beginning, I am no expert, but have had a great deal of luck with a few simple procedures. Generally, the size of orchid they sell at the big retailers fits perfectly in a 6” clay orchid pot. I use pre-mixed orchid mix – the kind with the chunks of charcoal and vermiculite mixed with the tree bark. And I put a thin layer of sphagnum moss on the top. Even with the monsoons we occasionally get down here, this seems to allow for enough moisture retention, yet allows drainage. All I do special when I am repotting is to upend the orchid plant when I remove it from the pot and make sure there isn’t anything going on with the roots. By that, I mean that sometimes they pot the orchids in these plastic pots with sphagnum moss. That tends to hold water at the roots when they shoot them with the hoses they use for watering at the retailers. So I gently remove the rotting sphagnum, and gently ease the roots into the bark medium just tightly enough that it is held into the pot. Then I TOP the pot with the sphagnum. I hang the orchids from an ornamental tree I have in my front yard, so they have full shade. I mostly have dendrobiums and phalaenopsis, but I have 1 catteya that I have done this for as well. I have an epidendrum, which I just added soil to the orchid mix to pot, and it is quite happy with that. As for care of my orchids, I use liquid fertilizer once every two-to-three weeks and I water them once a week. When we are in the full on dry season, I sometimes water twice a week.
I hope this amuses all of the veteran orchid growers out there, and encourages those of you out there that this isn’t rocket science, and is incredibly rewarding and addictive.
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