Any orchid experts?

[Dixie]

Are both these shoots on my orchid going to bloom? They look very different.

[masraum]

The top is a root, the bottom along the leaf is a stalk that's going to bloom.

[GH85Carrera]

Many orchids have "air roots" and do their work in air.

[astrochex]

Let me know if you need advice on having them mysteriously die.

[Baz]

There's a TON of info online about Orchid care. Not to mention books, magazines, and social media groups.

Your library should also have quite a few resources. And there are Orchid societies and hobby clubs worldwide.

If someone wishes to know more about them and their care - plenty of resources to tap into.

While a student at UF in the seventies.....I was lucky enough to study under one of the best....Dr. Tom Sheehan, who sadly left us in 2016. From his obituary:

Tom joined the Marines in December, 1942 and served as a weather forecaster until 1945 when the Marines transferred him to a Naval V-12 program at Dartmouth. He was discharged in March, 1946.
He married Marion Elizabeth Ruff in June, 1950 and they had three children: Thomas, Peter and Marian.
After graduation from Cornell in 1952, he got a job at the Georgia Agriculture Experiment Station in Griffin, GA as a horticulturist. In 1954 he joined the staff of the Ornamental Horticulture Department at the University of Florida and was involved in extension teaching and research for the next 37 years. He also served as Chairman of the Department before retiring. His specialty crop was orchids and he was deeply involved in the international orchid scene.
Tom attended 18 of the 21 World Orchid Conferences, missing only the first, fourth and seventh. He was a speaker at ten World Orchid Conferences, as well as the program chairman for the 11th WOC in Miami, Florida. He was awarded the World Orchid Conference Medal for outstanding contributions to the science and practice of Orchidology during the 21st WOC in Johannesburg, South Africa. He authored books about orchids and served, with his wife Marion, as co-author of the longest running series, Orchid Genera Illustrated, in the American Orchid Society's monthly magazine, Orchids. Tom was the recipient of two AOS Gold Medals of Achievement, only the third person in the organization's history to be so recognized. In addition, he served for 14 years as the American Orchid Society's representative to the Royal Horticultural Society Advisory Committee on Orchid Hybrid Registration.
Tom also served as a consultant for the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization on cut flower production in Singapore, Kenya, Guyana, Barbados and Bolivia, as well as for the Canadian Aluminum Corp in Jamaica.
He was also an active member of the Florida State Horticulture Society, where he served as Vice President, President and Chairman of the Board, as well as program coordinator for 11 years.

I graduated in 1977, and have remained in the Green Industry since. Dr. Sheehan was one of my fav. professors. His wife, Marion Ruff Sheehan, a renowned illustrator, also taught and was a lovely person.

I was fortunate to have attended a local Orchid presentation by Dr. Sheehan at the County Extension Service facility in Deland back when I still had my 4 speed '69 Volvo 145S. I brought Mom with me to this function. She wasn't used to riding with someone who drove with such gusto, but still enjoyed the outing.

I've dabbled with Orchids over the years and do pretty good with them overall. They are fun to grow and not very hard to maintain, as long as you follow some basics.

I like to use these clear containers with lots of drainage. I also liquid feed them on a regular basis. Most do not like full sun so I have them under a piece of shade cloth on the south side where they do get plenty of bright light.

I have some work to do with mine - mostly dividing and re-potting and will do so sometime this Spring.

[masraum]

99 times out of 100, the reason that they die is over watering (or media that promotes the roots being too wet for too long). The good news is that if you under water them, they can recover nicely. Lots of times when you buy them, they come in something like sphagnum moss which will hold water for a LONG time and results in over watering.

Most orchid potting mix is more like chunks of bark with a few other substances mixed in. That works pretty well.

Another common media for orchids and what I've had the best results with is clay pellets.
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/odla-growing-media-clay-pellets-50288546/

The key to this is to get a tall container (I use the quart containers that soup usually come in from a deli or restaurant for take-out. Then create 3-5 holes in the sides of the container about 1-1.5" from the bottom (kind of a pain without splitting the container). Then usually once a week, you completely flood the container with water (and fertilizer) letting it soak for up to 5 mins, then allow the water to drain out down to the holes. That ensures that the clay pellets are damp, and leaves a small reservoir of liquid in the bottom of the pot (that 1-2" of space below the holes). The water in the reservoir will then wick up the clay pellets and keep the pellets wet and the roots happy without them being too wet.

Another key is to not feed them too heavily. Frequent and light feedings is preferred for most common sorts of orchids which is how they live in nature. There's a guy that is (or was back when I was learning ~10 years ago) very active on orchid forums. He used to have a business, but had moved and stopped, but still had a lot of knowledge and info.

I was on a few threads where he shared lots of info as well as exchanging a few PMs with him about this stuff. This is some of the info that he provided.

Being an engineer and bit of a nerd, I started delving into the nutritional needs of orchids, and it actually opened my eyes significantly. (Warning! Professorial mode: On)

If you look at the makeup of an orchid, it is 95% water. Of the remaining 5%, about 95% of that is carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, with the first two coming from water and air; the N it gets from the fertilizer we apply. The remaining fraction of a percent is the rest of the stuff it gets from fertilizer.

Add to that some analyses of the water that drips down on orchids in the wild (their primary source of nutrition), and we see that it is almost devoid of any nutritional value - 15-25 ppm total dissolved solids (TDS) is typical, and that's only when it just starts raining - and we learn that most of that is nitrogen.

So my conclusion from that is that nitrogen is the most important nutrient, but it should be applied very sparingly, as 1) the plants have evolved to need very meager nutrition levels, and 2) excessive N can actually stifle flowering.

I won't go into details (look up "Rubisco" if you're a bit of an intellectual masochist), but in order for any plant to add about a pound of mass - a huge amount in orchids - it must absorb and process about 25 gallons (roughly 95 kg) of water, but only about 5 grams of nutrient elements.

So, about 7 or 8 years ago (I've been growing orchids for over 45 years now), all of that led me to this growing regimen:
• Use a VERY open potting medium, so the roots always have excellent air flow around them.
• Water the daylights out of them: Frequent & Flooding. Water is the driving force behind plant growth.
• Use a very small amount of fertilizer at every watering. I mean really little. Divide 2 by the %N on the labels to get the teaspoons per gallon to use.
• Make sure that "fertigation" solution contains nitrogen, calcium, and magnesium; the other stuff can "tag along". (Your water supply may have enough calcium and magnesium in it, but as a user of RO water, I add it.). I prefer K-Lite, a 12-1-1-10Ca-3Mg derivative of the MSU RO formula.

I found that the K-Lite that he referred to was hard to easily get online. The MSU fertilizer that you often read about, IIRC, led to the development of one that's fairly easy to find called "Peters Cal Mag 15-5-15" which is pretty easy to find (so that's what I used).

Depending upon the climate and weather, I may also mist the orchids once or twice daily (like when it's really dry in the winter with the heat really drying things out.

The most common orchid is phalaenopsis, usually big leaves on opposing sides of the central stalk. My guess is that's what's posted above. Those usually bloom after a few days of temps in the 60s. I'll often put them near a window in the winter in an effort to get them to bloom.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Baz

There's a TON of info online about Orchid care. Not to mention books, magazines, and social media groups.

Your library should also have quite a few resources. And there are Orchid societies and hobby clubs worldwide.

If someone wishes to know more about them and their care - plenty of resources to tap into.

While a student at UF in the seventies.....I was lucky enough to study under one of the best....Dr. Tom Sheehan, who sadly left us in 2016.

I graduated in 1977, and have remained in the Green Industry since. Dr. Sheehan was one of my fav. professors. His wife, Marion Ruff Sheehan, a renowned illustrator, also taught and was a lovely person.

I was fortunate to have attended a local Orchid presentation by Dr. Sheehan at the County Extension Service facility in Deland back when I still had my 4 speed '69 Volvo 145S. I brought Mom with me to this function. She wasn't used to riding with someone who drove with such gusto, but still enjoyed the outing.

I've dabbled with Orchids over the years and do pretty good with them overall. They are fun to grow and not very hard to maintain, as long as you follow some basics.

I like to use these clear containers with lots of drainage. I also liquid feed them on a regular basis. Most do not like full sun so I have them under a piece of shade cloth on the south side where they do get plenty of bright light.

I have some work to do with mine - mostly dividing and re-potting and will do so sometime this Spring.

Very nice! I had several that I was keeping in our apt when we lived in town. I was having good luck with them, good growth, yearly blooming, etc.... When we moved to our new place, I didn't have a place or the time for them so got rid of all but one.

My mom lives a bit south of you in Vero. She's got 2 or 3. She tied them to a tree in her back yard, and they've been there for years and are healthy and happy and rebloom. I'm jealous of the ability to stick them outside and not have heat, cold, or dry weather kill them.

[wdfifteen]

My wife grows some of those fancy orchids in the house. They seem to like her care.

Ohio has over 40 species of native orchids and there are half a dozen on our property, so I grow mine out the woods.

[Baz]

Originally Posted by masraum

---snip---I'm jealous of the ability to stick them outside and not have heat, cold, or dry weather kill them.

You should be.

Not too many days go by that I'm not grateful for our climate, given my passion for tropical gardening!

[greglepore]

Baz, that Catylaya is spectacular.

I went down an orchid propagation rabbit hole on youtube, had no idea it was easy. Also, the various "cures" for semi dead orchids are really cool, rice water, garlic etc and they revive.

[Baz]

Originally Posted by greglepore

Baz, that Catylaya is spectacular.

I went down an orchid propagation rabbit hole on youtube, had no idea it was easy. Also, the various "cures" for semi dead orchids are really cool, rice water, garlic etc and they revive.

Thanks, Greg.....that's a Home Depot orchid I picked up in '22. The purple is a Dendrobium, also sourced from Home Depot.