How I Grow My Orchids

Because orchids are one of those “minute to learn, lifetime to master” deals, I can’t claim in this post to cover everything and believe me, I certainly don’t know everything to cover.  I’m no gardening expert and I have limited experience growing my own orchids, most of which are from the same source (more on that later) in USDA zone 6b.

Your mileage may vary.

However, I can share a few tips, in terms of what I’ve learned from my own mistakes and what, in turn, has worked for me.

But first, before you decide whether you care, here are a few of mine taking the sun in my preferred summer writing area:

My orchid collection is an ever-growing affair.  These are the ones that, right now, are blooming.  They’ll bloom for awhile (orchid blooms tend to last a very long time) and then their blooms will fall while the plants themselves focus energy on their leaves and root systems.  They won’t bloom again for somewhere between 8 and 12 months.  Which is one of the reasons I get so excited when they do bloom, and take so many pictures.  It’s an event!

Orchid growing is, in and of itself, an event.  Orchid growing guides are all full of helpful advice like, water them too much and they die.  Water them too little and they die.  Watering them too little is better than watering them too much, but they’ll still die.  Oh, and the same thing goes for sunlight.  It can seem like, look at them too much and they die.

So, being a masochist who loves a challenge, I decided that these were the plants for me.

After a great deal of research, I decided to grow mine semi-hydroponically.  This is because most of the problems people have with orchids can be traced to the fact that an orchid really doesn’t belong in a pot in the first place.  You can’t treat it like a regular house plant; it doesn’t live in dirt and its roots, indeed, need some degree of sunlight and air exposure.  In the wild, orchids–which are symbiotic rather than parasitic–cling onto trees.  The best planting experience is the one that most closely replicates that natural environment.  Just like the best planting experience for your Marble Queen Pothos is going to involve dirt, because that’s what it grows in in the wild.

There are hydroponic kits that you can buy, but I assembled my own using three things:

A suitable pot (I tend to favor Lechuza or SWE)
Hydroponic grow rocks (I buy Plant It! because it’s the cheapest)
Water-soluble orchid food (I use Orchid Plus)

You do not need fancy brand names.  Your orchids will not know the difference.  So if you can find a pot that does what it’s supposed to do, for less, then go for it.  A Lechuza pot, at around 30–40 USD, is an investment.  But the way I see it, each orchid is going to cost you about the same as a bottle of wine.  Maybe a bottle of okay wine, maybe a bottle of really great wine.  Either way, that’s fine if you’re only buying a couple.  But if you keep buying them…that’s when the problems start.  An orchid, or any plant, really, is an investment.  And you’re going to get the most out of that investment if you start with the right tools.

Which brings me to the next issue: finding the right orchid.

Don’t be shy about where you get your orchids.  Like with a lot of things, brand name cachet can be misleading.  I get most of mine from our local Home Depot.  In our immediate environs, we have a couple of choices of where to buy plants.  One of them is a fancy garden center that advertises itself to “real” gardeners and costs the earth.  The other is humble Home Depot.  Which, unlike the aforementioned garden center, is staffed by orchid junkies.  They have such a great selection, in fact, that people drive from all over the greater Salem area to check it out.  The girl who rang me up yesterday commented on this.  My infamous purple orchid is a phalaenopsis hybrid that our Home Depot just started carrying, from a nursery I’d never heard of.

The “real” garden center doesn’t even carry orchids!

Wherever you see a good orchid, and you like that orchid, snap it up.  What matters here is the final result, which is a plant you like.  Don’t let people with their noses in the air make you feel like you don’t know enough to be a gardener.

Now, if you do know something about orchids, and you’ve seen my pictures, you’ll know that I tend to favor phalaenopsis.  Which are sometimes disparagingly referred to as “beginner orchids.”  By the same folks who like to tell you that orchid growing is “easy,” and building your own spaceship out of a Buick is easy, and they know everything.  I think phalaenopsis are pretty and, since they’re so popular, it’s much easier to find exciting hybrids (i.e. my big purple there) in even more exciting colors.  I guess it depends on what, as a gardener, you’re after.

Another advantage of phalaenopsis is that, unlike with most other orchid varieties (of which there are over 35,000), they can be repotted–very gently, and carefully–while in the midst of their bloom cycles.  Which is really necessary, I think, as the pots they tend to come in tend to be awful.  If you’ve ever been given an orchid and, despite your best efforts to care for it, it more or less immediately died, that’s probably why.

Orchids roots aren’t meant to be submerged in water; they’re meant to be hanging out, doing their thing.  Which is why they can become waterlogged so easily, and thus why your orchid can die so easily–even if you’re watering it exactly according to whatever instructions you were given, or received with the plant.  The biggest challenge with the traditional approach is guessing, correctly, when to water.  Passive systems like hydroponics, on the other hand, take the decision out of your hands.  Orchids, like all plants, do best when they can decide how much how much of the appropriate nutrients they need and then draw on them accordingly.

So the first thing to do is to assemble your pot, if assembly is necessary, and then gather it, your orchid, and whatever hydroponic grow rocks you’re using.  Very carefully remove the orchid from its original pot and, again, very carefully dislodge any debris from around the roots.  This is a great video on distinguishing healthy roots from those afflicted with root rot, if you’re interested.

Then, sort of holding the orchid in place, hovering more or less in the place in the pot you want it, begin to fill in around the roots, carefully and by hand–i.e. not upending the bag–until the plant is secure in the pot.  You don’t want to pack the rocks in but you don’t want the orchid to be sliding around, either.  You can secure whatever supports are holding up the bloom spikes by wiggling them around a bit and gently pressing down until they become fixed in the rocks.

Water-wise, I fill each pot, according to that pot’s particular directions, with a mixture of water and orchid food.  Which is why I buy the water-soluble orchid food.  One of the reasons I favor the pots I do is that the water, once in them, is inaccessible to children and animals.  I’d like to think everyone’s smart enough not to drink strangely blue-tinted water but let’s not take chances.  Safety first.

Then, I find them a sun-filled spot to sit and let them do their thing.  Orchids don’t drink that much.  They drink a very little amount, and more or less continuously.  The biggest challenge with a system like this is trust: that it can and will work if you leave it (and your orchid) alone.  Regarding sunlight, orchids like a lot of indirect sunlight.  Mine enjoy summer living on the screen porch, where they get just that.  If you don’t have an ideal spot, you may have to move your orchid once or twice a day as the light shifts.

But keep in mind that, once an orchid starts to flower, it should always face in the same direction.  Turning the orchid around, for example, might damage the flower spike.  My general philosophy, with orchids as well as with my other plants, has always been to pick a spot that seems reasonable and hope for the best.  I only move them if I see clear signs that the plant is not happy there.  I have one hypoestes that’s unhappy everywhere.

I hope this helps!  And thank you to everyone on my Facebook page, who’s shown such an interest in my gardening adventures!  If you have any more specific questions, please let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.