In my first installment of this diary series, I focused on finding enough light for my first orchid growing attempt, and I introduced the the genus of moth orchids, Phalaenopsis — the first orchid you’re likely to encounter in a store, and probably the easiest to raise.
My little table in my living room by the north-northeast facing picture window got me enough light (barely), and fortunately the living room is on a programmable thermostat, so my orchids weren’t going to die of extreme temperatures. The hard part remained…
Challenge 2
Orchids are kind of picky about watering. Most orchids that you can buy in a store are epiphytes — that is, they grow on trees. Some grow on rocks (lithophytes), and a very few are more traditional, terrestrial plants. Plants that grow on rocks and trees aren’t used to having a lot of moisture clinging to their roots. They want outstanding drainage and no standing water, but they need something to hold a bit of moisture near to them like they’d get from the bark of a tree. So what better way to plant them than in tree bark! This is how you’ll find most orchids potted for sale today.
Most common orchid species take the same basic watering scheme: water thoroughly, drain, and let dry before watering again. Check your specific orchid to make sure, though! Your growing space may dictate how you water your orchids. If you have a few orchids and a sink nearby, you might just grab your orchids and run water over the pot (being careful not to wash away the growing medium). Or if you have a large growing bench you might be able to take a watering wand to the lot — or even an indirect sprinkle with a hose. Whatever method you use, the water should be room temperature, and it’s best if it hasn’t been run through a water softener which adds sodium. I have a small crowded growing shelf and I use orchid cache pots most of the time; it’s not convenient to take the plants out, so I have a mist spray bottle that I use to ensure the plants are watered correctly.
What’s correctly? With my mist bottle and the orchid cache pots, I spray evenly and moderately until water begins to drain to the catch plate below the pot. This not only gives me a gauge, it also gives the orchid a bit of added humidity without letting the roots sit in water. If you’ve recently re-potted, the growing mixture might not be so accepting of water; in this case, water slowly until it begins to drain, wait one half-hour, then water again at a more moderate pace. However you water, you want to wind up with damp medium and no water for the roots to sit in — unless you have one of those few orchids that likes water a lot...
The other part of the problem is knowing when your orchid has had a chance to dry out. You’ll probably get a feel for the timing itself after a while, but I find the best way is to get used to the weight of the orchid when its pot is dry. Since most of my orchids are in the same potting mixture, they tend to dry out about the same time, and I water most of them together. How often you have to water depends on your conditions, but it probably isn’t more than twice per week. If your orchids are getting a lot of sun and breeze, it might be three days. Or if it’s really humid and your orchids are in indirect light all the time, it could be a full week. Use the dry weight method and you’ll learn to give your orchids the best treatment all the time.
Moth orchids provide a somewhat obvious indicator of how you’re doing with your watering. Almost all of them put out roots at and above the top of their growing medium, and the health of those roots is easy to see. A healthy root on a moth orchid (and on many other orchids) will be thick and firm, with a whitish sheath covering all but the growing end of the root, which will be green with perhaps a bit of purplish tint. If all but the very newest roots on your plant are withering and turning brownish, ask yourself what you’re doing — and your first guess should be over-watering. Some orchids aren’t nearly so easy to inspect; lady slipper orchids tend to put their roots down into the medium, and Oncidiums and their relatives have fine root systems that tend to look unhealthy once they straggle their way out of the pot and into the air. I’ve been judging all of my Oncidium family orchids by one plant that happens to have a root system just near the top of the medium where I can see it but where it can remain healthy. Someone in the previous diary recommended using clear plastic pots; I have a couple of these, and it does make things a bit easier. In a worst-case scenario, you can look at the roots when you re-pot; orchids need to set root in their loose medium, so you shouldn’t re-pot too often, but if your plant looks like it’s dying anyway, getting a look at the roots might help you figure out your problem. And if you think the pot should be dry, when you go to re-pot you get a hands-on evaluation!
Since I live in a very dry area of the country made even drier by home heating, I also run a cool mist humidifier in the room with my plants. Humidity isn’t a must with most orchids, but it along with moving air helps to prevent leaf scorch. Humidity also extends the time that the growing medium remains moist enough for the plant without making it so wet that the roots rot, and it gives the leaves something to absorb directly to prevent them from drying out. If you are in a dry area and don’t run a humidifier or provide some kind of tray of water nearby (but never touching your plants!), you will have to water more frequently, and perhaps you’ll want to mist your plants in the morning...
And again, remember to check your plant’s needs when you buy (or otherwise inherit or adopt) it! Even some plants within the same genus have differing requirements in light, water, and temperature.
Keeping It Alive — My Second Orchid
Moth orchids are easy to find and they’re beautiful, but when I collect things, I like to have a variety. So I set out on a quest to find a good second orchid to sit on my limited-light table. A second orchid was my commitment to remember to water and take care of both in my growing collection! As a nature photographer, I’ve long been captivated by lady slipper orchids. It’s really hard to buy North American orchids, though, and our temperate conditions are very different than those required by most other orchids. Fortunately, there are lady slipper orchids in other parts of the world, too. One group of those, the Asian Lady Slippers of the genus Paphiopedilum (Paff-ee-oh-ped-di-lum), happens to have a number of plants that are suited to such limited light conditions…
Paphiopedilum is an orchid genus with some distinct splits in its personality. To start, orchid growers will talk about these lady slippers as having either mottled leaves or plain leaves. Mottled leafed Paphs generally have lower light requirements than their plain-leaved cousins (contrary to the normal rule of variegated plants requiring more light...). Also, the mottled leaf lady slippers often rate high on the “houseplant appeal” scale. Those with silver and dark green vein patterns are especially appealing, as they tend to have compact, dense leaf growth that is very pleasing to the eye. The plain leafed varieties tend to put out longer leaves in a fan pattern, more like their South American cousins the Phragmipediums. Having figured all of this out, I chose my first lady slipper: Paphiopedilum Deperle — a strongly silver-and-green mottled leaf plant with a soft-looking mostly white flower having a hint of purple speckling near the column. It, like the first moth orchid I purchased, re-bloomed in the north-facing window — as low-light an orchid as I could hope to find.
As I said, Paphiopedilum is a genus with some distinct splits in its personality. Deperle’s soft, velvety flower look is contrasted with my second Asian lady slipper, Paphiopedilum Magically Wood, shown at the top of this diary and as a full portrait below. This other (and more common) side of the family tends toward distinctly waxy flowers with open lips, stripes, coarse hairs, dimpled-looking spots, and colors attractive to the flies that pollinate them in nature — white, green, and various shades of “meat”, with the occasional yellow added in. Like my first lady slipper, I chose this one in part for its mottled leaves — and therefore supposedly lower light requirements, though I’ve had it in the “medium” light section of my shelf now that I’m growing under artificial lighting.
This plant is quite a bit younger than my Deperle; you can see here (maybe) that there are only two sets of growth in the pot. Asian lady slippers grow in sympodial fashion. This means that each season’s growth comes up at a new point further along the base of the plant, much like some bulb and tuber plants. Almost all orchids grow in cycles: new growth, maturation, flowering, and sometimes a dormant period before starting on new growth again. Once the flower is gone from this plant — or perhaps while the flower is still present — it will begin to grow a new set of leaves, which will mature and put up a new flower spike. Asian lady slippers don’t generally have a dormant period; like moth orchids, they’re pretty much a year-round plant.
Family: Paphiopedilum
Alias: Asian Lady Slipper
Risk vs. Reward: Medium risk, solid reward. Lady slippers of any sort are harder to find than most commercially grown orchid varieties, and are almost always among the most expensive orchids for their potting size. Asian lady slippers aren’t quite as expensive as some, but they still aren’t cheap. However, the lady slippers in this genus are pretty easy to grow, and their showy and unique flowers are highly rewarding. The flower reward is a bit less for having one or perhaps a small number of blooms, but they can last for a month or more. And in the off-season the leaves are still pretty enough that you’re not ashamed of the plant in non-orchidophile company.
Lighting: Low to moderate — low-light varieties require a couple of hours of morning sunlight followed by indirect sunlight for the rest of the day, or bright indirect sun throughout the day; a few even prefer good shade. Indoors, a bit more than 1ft away from a 125W CFL grow lamp: 1,000-1,500 foot-candles. Those with plain green leaves in fan patterns require a bit more light, though still on the low end — perhaps an extra hour of morning/evening light and a about 1ft away from that 125W CFL grow lamp, ~1,500 foot-candles.
Temperature: Cool to Moderate — Mottled types generally want at least 60 degree nights, while green leaf types tend to be okay down to 55. Like most orchids, a 10+ degree temperature swing between night and day is good.
Watering and Fertilizing: Water thoroughly and let dry between waterings, but just barely; roots will rot in the pot if over-watered, but the plant’s leaves are not very thick and it has no pseudobulb, so it can’t be without water for too long, either. I Fertilize as with moth orchids: 20-10-20 every other week, and a seaweed growth booster once per month.
Potting: Plastic pot, medium to coarse bark-based mixture.