Orchid Mania

The orchid is Mother Nature's masterpiece.
— Robyn

An orchid in a deep forest sends out its fragrance even if no one is around to appreciate it.
― Confucius

If I see an orchid that's fantastically expensive, I'll buy it. It's worth it, for no other reason than it gives me pleasure.
— Lee Radziwill

My first orchid was a Cattleya Orchid. It looked something like this:

This isn't a picture of my orchid, it only had one bloom, but it was massive. I bought it as a seedling and it’s amazing to me that it survived because I knew nothing about orchids at the time. Nevertheless, it grew. Dare I say it flourished? It took seven years before there was a single bud on it, and six more months before the bud opened. The bloom stayed open for months, until the summer came.

The plant graced the end of the kitchen counter, and although the window air conditioning unit we had at the time was in the dining room, apparently the blast of cold air was strong enough to reach my plant. I learned the hard way that orchids don’t like blasts of cold air. Not only did I lose the blossom, I lost the entire plant.

I’ve been careful with the orchids I’ve bought since then and currently I have about half a dozen of them.

A few months ago, I did a post about indoor gardening and included a picture of the orchids on my kitchen window ledge. One had a couple of bloom stalks that had run their course and the blooms had died, but it also grew a new bloom stalk that was full of blooms. The other plant had a bloom stalk that was still in bud.

The smaller orchid is still blooming, and the buds are now open on the second orchid.

I also have a one of the orchids in my office blooming at the moment:

You notice there’s only a couple of leaves on this orchid. I have another one that’s down to just one leaf, and I’m not sure why. They all get treated the same way and the others are okay so far (*knock on wood*). Though I’ve never used it in the past, I bought some orchid food for them – I figure I have nothing to lose.

The prize in my collection is my Oncidium Orchid:

Unfortunately it’s not too happy with me right now because it’s getting too much sun so its blooms are starting to fall off, but I’m going to give it a shot of the plant food and maybe try and find a new place to keep it.

I also picked up a couple of mini orchids, but they were already starting to lose their blooms before I got them home.

A lot of people are intimidated by orchids, but they’re surprisingly easy to grow. If you like plants, I encourage you to get one. If you’re afraid of overwatering, try using ice cubes. The mini orchids take one ice cube a couple of times a week, the larger plants take 3 cubes, two or three times a week. My neighbor, who has some beautiful orchids, swears by the ice cube method of watering.

So next time you see an orchid for sale, go ahead and splurge. Next thing you know, you’ll have a shelf full of them, like me. :-)