Orchid School: A Few Pointers

There's a whole lotta pottin' goin' on on Indigo Hill. 

Nothing like about 10 days in the 80's in mid-October to get me out and washing orchids! It's the kind of thing that I have to be in the right mood to do. If I'm in the right mood, it's fun. Not in the right mood: endless wet drudgery. 

What? You don't wash your orchids?  Every couple of years, I repot mine. I knock them out of their pots, rinse every bit of medium off their roots.  Before I put them in new medium and clean pots, I wash their leaves with a hard spray of cool water, rubbing away scale and the sugar deposits they leave. Then I clip off anything rotty: brown spongy roots, old withered pseudobulbs if they're the type of orchid that makes pseudobulbs. 

This year, I'm potting everything in nice long-staple sphagnum moss. It's the blonde stuff that comes in dried bricks. I'm using sphagnum not just because it's way cheaper than Aussie Gold. I'm using it because I've noticed that the best, firmest, greenest roots are forming in the orchids I've potted in sphagnum. They're healthy and not rotting because they've got ample air in this light weight, non-packing medium. For some fine pointers on sphagnum quality, go here.

Your results may vary. Sphagnum works well for me here in Ohio. If you live in a super-humid place,  you might do better with coco fiber medium or even bark. 

I'm sprinkling some Aussie Gold medium into the sphagnum, but overall it's 90% moss.  I soak the moss before packing it loosely around the roots. 

I took the opportunity to hack up a massive jewel orchid that was overgrown and flopping out of its pot. In the center is the mother plant. All around it are the long floppy stems I snapped off at their joints. I got 13 of 'em, and put them all to root in moist sphagnum in another container. 

I noticed that jewel orchids seem to send down roots to about 5" deep in the pot, then quit. The growth habit is to spread, laterally. So what they want is a pot that's wider than it is deep. Not having one of those, I put some  spacers in the form of deli containers and lava rock in the bottom of a big 10" pot, and heaped the sphagnum medium atop that. That should help get air to the roots, and encourage good drainage.

Mother plant to the left, nicely trimmed back and now with room to expand, and cuttings to the right. Discarded stems at bottom. I didn't use any rooting hormone because this is one badass orchid...I think those cuttings will root without any help. 

Add Bacon and sun, and you get happy Zick. I like to say that plant propagation is my only vice. I would happily develop some more, but opportunity is lacking. 

This is what jewel orchids do in midwinter! I love them best in candalabra bud.

But when those little white flowers open: Redonk!! It's too much.

The nice thing about this plant is the glorious velvety leaves with deep maroon reverse. Also the fact that it cannot be stopped, and I've never found an insect that bothers it. So I'm propagatin' on with my bad self.

I have 32 orchids, and tending to them all took parts of three days. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to spend the time it takes to tend them.  I'm not replacing my big orchids as they slowly pass on. I don't need more stuff to care for. But the collecting urge is still strong, so I'm downsizing. The only orchids I buy any more are the mini Phalaenopsis that I find at the grocery store. I love them so.  They fit on my kitchen windowsill: big plus.  I can add just one or two more without too much crowding. And the bunch of them in midwinter, going nuts on my kitchen sill, gets me through February.

If you're an orchid connoisseur, don't walk by ones that look like this one, below.  It may not be the most striking in color, but it's got a secret. It's got Phalaenopsis schilleriana in its parentage, which you can tell by its lightly mottled leaves, pale pink coloration, and heavenly incredible paradisiacal FRAGRANCE. Muguet from Venus.

These get to sit on my drawing board, and get picked up and inhaled about 60 times a day.

Since orchids in grocery stores rarely are warm or happy enough to emanate any fragrance, the other tipoff for P. schilleriana is the little moustache at the bottom of the flower's lower lip. 

This one's a real dandy--beautiful leaves. You probably won't find a beauty like this in a grocery store. But these are the characteristics that say it's going to be fragrant. Keep in mind that they may not emanate if the ambient temperature is under about 75 degrees. When mine bloom in mid-winter, they rarely emit any fragrance. But ohhh those midsummer and autumn blooms.There's a wee schilleriana at my elbow right now.

The Why of Orchids

The east window, where orchids get just the right amount of sun, year-round.

I often hear from people who say that they can keep orchids alive, but the plants won't rebloom.
Maybe it's true--you haven't got the touch, or you haven't got the accommodations orchids most prefer. But maybe not. I think it's important to keep in mind that orchid time is a very slow time. You can expect one flush of bloom each year. And sometimes it takes two or three years for a plant to rest and recuperate, until it decides it's happy and it takes off.
Note the humidity trays, always kept filled. But the orchids never sit in water; they're elevated on tiles so their roots don't get soggy and rot. When the trays evaporate dry, I refill them with really hot water. That keeps the algae and insects in check.

About reblooming: Most orchids sold in grocery stores and warehouses have been fertilized like crazy and pushed to bloom hard at a very young age. Maybe after that flush of bloom finishes, they need to catch their breath for a year or two. An older plant simply has more reserves, more leaves or more pseudobulbs (the swellings at the base of leaves in cattleya and oncidium types) to make more food. And it's so worth it to wait out that youthful period and let your plants mature and really show what they can do. That's when it gets fun, and addictive.

You grow together, like compatible partners. You find out what each plant likes, developing an empathy over the years.

The most basic requirement of orchids is sufficient light. I suspect that 90% of the problems people report with orchids failing to rebloom revolve around insufficient light. Many folks keep them on mantels or end tables because they look so pretty there, and forget that this is a plant with a need for strong light--yes, even direct sunlight! You wouldn't expect a gardenia to bloom and thrive on a coffee table, so why should an orchid? East window, a few hours of sun each day--that's ideal for most orchids.

Speaking of empathy, I get a lot of orchids as waifs. People buy them in bloom and then enjoy them while they're blooming, but forget to water them or maybe put them on an end table or in a sunny hot west window or cook them over a radiator. By the time they get to me the leaves are limp and hanging over the pot and the roots are rotted and the plant is gasping its last. I knock the plant out of the pot and trim off all the dead roots and put it in fresh medium and mist it every day. And it's amazing how it will spring back and say thank you thank you thank you. It's gratifying.

This was a very fine Doritaenopsis that was badly handled at our local Kroger's. It had been left out in 20-degree weather on a rack and all but two of its leaves froze off. I brought this beautiful plant home only to see its leaves turn to yellow mush and fall off within two days. That was two years ago. I coddled it and loved it and now it's springing back so beautifully, making new leaves and even sending up a marvelous, branched flower spike this spring. See how those leaves stand straight out? They're full of turgor pressure--they don't droop flaccidly over the sides of the pot. That's the sign of a very happy orchid. It's going to be a magnificent plant in another two years. Orchids are very forgiving, very long-lived, and so much tougher than people realize. It literally takes years to kill one.



I started this little Iwangara "Appleblossom" from one little pseudobulb from a plant of mine that had become infested with mealybugs. Unable to rid it of mealybugs, I threw the mother plant out and put all my faith in this offshoot. And oh, how it has rewarded that faith.


Such an elegant, fragrant flower it has--almost like a corsage.
Laeliocattleya x Encyclia cordigera "Pixie" sat around thinking for three years after I bought it in bloom. No buds. Nothin' doin'. And then, this spring, this:


I think it wanted to be misted, that's what I think. In fact, all my plants wanted to be misted. So now I mist them a couple of times a day. We all enjoy it. It's such a simple thing to do, and once I saw the jaw-dropping results, I really began to enjoy spritzing them.


Phalaenopsis "Lava Glow" is such a great little plant. Red is a rare color. And the magenta lip kills me.

You can sometimes find Lava Glow in Loew's. Although Loew's is an awful place for a great orchid, or any orchid. I've never been able to figure out what our local Loew's gains by never watering its orchid stock. The honor of having them drop all their buds and die? The thrill of throwing them out?

I know where the taps are at our Loew's. I go get a new watering can off the shelf and fill it up and water their damn orchids, that's what I do. And I don't buy them there. I buy orchids at orchid shows. Half the price and twice the quality. And should I ever see a red-vested employee lurking around the orchids, I ask them why no one cares for their inventory. Invariably I get: It isn't my job. It's so-and-so's job, and she's out sick/elsewhere. Oh, well, of course. Why should anyone else care? How can anyone walk by a plant that's screaming for water, dying right before their eyes?

With orchids, I grow what I can. There are some orchids I know better than to try: Miltonia, Zygopetalum, Phragmipedium, Cymbidium; the really big cattleyas. I stick to what I can grow well, and what's small enough to fit into a bursting collection.

I branched out a bit for this Psychopsis mendenhall "Hildos." I bought it for $25. It had one 3" long leaf. The grower, Kim Stehli of Windswept in Time Orchids, who I trust implicitly, assured me it'd be worth it. "Just wait!" she said. "This is my favorite orchid."
So I waited. Here's the tag, with my notes:

Bought in April '07 with one leaf. It sent up a spike and by June '08 it was blooming. By October '09 it had made 13 blossoms and was adding a fifth leaf. That leaf threw out a second flower spike in April '10. And here's that new spike. It really wouldn't have had to do that. I was delighted with it as it was.

But wait! The old spike is still blooming away.

With this.
Hold your hand up, fingers spread. That's how big that flower is. It waves, chest high to me, on its wiry, yard-long stem. Kim told me that she's known a single Psychopsis spike to keep blooming for seven years. So we never cut off Psychopsis flower spikes until they wither away on their own. They always have a bud up their sleeve.

It is over the top, ridiculous, dearly loved. With two spikes throwing out flower after flower, it has the potential of being everblooming. Yes, just wait. It'll be worth it. Everything good is worth waiting for. Orchids illustrate that, magnificently.

More Orchids

In March 2006, I bought two little seedlings, tiny enough to both fit in my palm, at a flower show in Chicago where I was speaking. It was so cold that I put them in my shirt for the ride to the hotel and airport. I didn't know what they'd look like when they bloomed, but I was willing and eager to wait. Hey, I'd be waiting anyway. Might as well have something to look forward to. One is blooming now, and here's what I got.

It's Phalaenopsis "Brother Coral" x "Everspring Pearl." And guess what? It's fragrant!! I do like it! Worth the wait!

With orchid crosses like this, people hand-pollinate the flowers with a brush, and when the dustlike seeds form and ripen in the pod, they scatter them on agar (a seaweed derived nutrient medium gel) in a closed flask. When the seeds germinate, they're almost microscopic. The seedlings are grown on in the flask until they're big enough to transplant. You don't really know for sure what you'll get, since some seedlings will have more properties of one parent than the other. Buying seedlings is a bit of a crapshoot, but I like that kind of gamble.

Iwangara 'Appleblossom" is a hybrid cross of Brassaevola, Cattleya, Diacrium (Caularthron) and Laelia orchids. Yes. A quadrigeneric hybrid. This is part of what is so dang cool about orchids. They are man-made, and yet manage to be so beautiful through it all. Someone decides he (or she) likes the growth habit of one, the fragrance of another, the color of another, the form of another, let's say, and crosses the plants and comes up with something unknown in nature, something virtually unnameable. So then they have to come up with a new genus name for this creation. Hence the bizarre genus Iwangara. It has a terrific growth habit, with nice fat pseudobulbs and springy arching paired leaves. And, like most of my others, it's wildly fragrant. Stinks up the room, it does. Ahhhh. In the picture below, you get a hint of that growth habit. Big plant! Has its own pedestal.

For pure bizarreness, it's hard to beat the Paphiopedalums, or slipper orchids. This is Paph. Emerald "Buint Ruby" x Paph. superbens "King." They're the most fun to photograph, with light coming through their petals.

It's on its second year with me, and it's made incredible growth from the seedling stage. The whole affair is about 2' tall. Love that checkered foliage, too. This flower will last two to three MONTHS on the plant. Most of my orchid flowers last two or more months. That's just another thing to love about them.

Back in February, I wrote about a very special orchid I bought last May--Psychopsis Mendenhall "Hildos." It was just a seedling, with two leaves (sound familiar?). Over the past year, it put out three great big mottled leaves, and in February 2008 I noticed something protruding from beneath them. It was, against all expectations, the plant's first flower spike. I really had no idea what I was in for, but I knew it would be good.

Here's what it looks like now. The spike is 37" tall. Yes. From a plant in a 2" plastic pot. Obviously, a very happy plant. Hildos lives in the east bedroom window, and loves to be bathed in sun for a few hours a day.

At the tip of that yard-tall spike is a very hopeful and bizarre-looking bud. The stem flattened out like a newt's tail and made a little tulip-shaped bud at the end. It has changed even more over the past few days since I took these pictures. And it is driving me crazy, because I think it's going to open while I'm away.

There is a precedent: Phoebe took her first steps the evening I left her with her daddy overnight for the first time. Some things in life just aren't fair. I came back from my overnight trip, and my baby was walking. I fully expected to come home from North Dakota and find this flower open.

Psychopsis Mendenhall "Hildos."

Since I wrote this post, I found that the bud had swelled and enlarged until it looked like an elf's shoe. Yesterday, I photographed it, but I was troubled by its color--a bit yellow. This morning, I looked closely at the bud again, and touched it oh so gently with a fingertip, whereupon it promptly fell off. Well, isn't that special. You wait since February and watch this thing grow to three feet and you know it only has one flower at a time but that one's a lollapalooza, and the very first bud falls off before it opens. However...there is another bud right beneath the stump of the first one, and I choose to interpret this inauspicious event as the plant trying not to bloom while I'm off giving a talk somewhere. Ahem.

Can I get an ARRRGHHH from the choir? It was my personal Belmont Stakes moment.

And looking on the bright side, this spike will live for years, unlike those of the Phalaenopsis orchids, which generally wither when the flowers do. It will throw out one blossom after another. I'm already nervous about repotting this plant, since they are said to resent disturbance. I would too, if I had a 3' flower spike. Oh well. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So that, my friends, is what's blooming (and dropping much-anticipated buds) right now on Indigo Hill. Inside the house, that is.

What's Blooming Now?

Doritaenopsis "Sogo Gem", on the left, and an unnamed Phalaenopsis on the right. They're lighting up the foyer.

If there were one thing I could change about orchids, it might be their tendency to bloom their fool heads off just as everything else OUTSIDE is doing that. They sit all winter, planning and vegetating, and then go ape in June, just like my roses and columbines, valerian and delphiniums, geraniums and violas...Oh, well. I'm not complaining. Just joy on top of joy, that's all. We can't expect to spread it out through the dreary months.

This is the little private party in one south-facing window in the bedroom right now. Pretty ridiculous, if you ask me. And oh, how I love it.
Years ago, maybe seven? Shila gave me a little keiki (baby) that had grown off her big purple Phalaenopsis. It was about 2" tall, with two tiny leaves. I never got its name. It's a mature plant now, flawless, and it makes more huge intricate flowers every year.

It's important not to turn a phalaenopsis while the buds are forming, or the flowers get confused and turn toward the light, and the ranking gets all messed up. I waited until the buds were all open to turn their faces away from the window and toward the denizens of the house. Ahhh. This is a HUGE plant, and I suspect it has Phalaenopsis gigantea somewhere in its parentage. It's so big and floppy that I had to put it in an enormous metal cachepot to support its heavy leaves. Gad, you'd think I could remove the tag from the cachepot. Having orchids all over your house doesn't necessarily mean you're a class act.

.

I bought this little Phalaenopsis "Universal Dream Stephanie" x "Taipei Gold Star" mostly for its fragrance. Yes, some of the Phal's are fragrant, usually the ones with smaller, waxy blooms. That tends to indicate that Phal. violacea is somewhere in their lineage, for it is wildly fragrant. You must wait until they're warm and the sun hits them, and then look out!

Orchids are nothing if not durable. This exquisite little Phal. very nearly died; it caught some kind of fungal disease and all its leaves turned yellow and mushy and fell off, all but one. I sequestered that sorry-looking thing in the downstairs bathroom, doused it with antifungal sulfur powder and waited two years. Now look at it! It's back up in the main collection and blooming its head off. And it's fragrant, too.

It's Phal. leucadia "Red Pepper" x Phal. goldiana "Zuma," and I think it's saying, "Thank you for having faith in me, and believing I'd come back."

Twyford "Lava Glow" is one of my favorite Phalaenopses. It's a gorgeous plant, with shiny dark-green leaves piled one atop the other. This year, it's got 24 blossoms, and I'm told a mature plant can have upwards of 50 at a time. The lip is an indescribably rich magenta-flame color, lost in this photo. The flowers are about the size of a quarter. If you see this plant in a big box store, and you may, pick it up! It's all I can do not to grab Lava Glow plants when I see them languishing at Lowe's. But I've got about fifty orchids now, and they're not getting smaller by the year. I'm out of room, with a bullet.

Best horticultural tip of the year, thanks to my friend Boneman. When you have 50 orchids to keep up with, you're going to have scale and mealybugs eventually. I used to use pyrethrins, and I hated to do it, and it didn't seem very effective, anyway, but I won't use the really poisonous stuff. I now spray my plants with Windex (with ammonia) and the scales just dry up and die. Windex doesn't burn the flowers like pyrethrins do. And I'd much rather have a spritz of Windex on my windows and floating in the air than insecticide, wouldn't you? I spray my orchids, it gets all over the windows, I wipe it off, I get clean windows instead of poisoned, murky ones, and everybody's happy. Thanks, Boneman!

More orchids tomorrow!