I'm not sure I like moth orchids. They're pretty to look at when in flower, but a bit of a pain to care for if you want them to bloom again.
I'm not sure I like moth orchids. They're pretty to look at when in flower, but a bit of a pain to care for if you want them to bloom again. And I think it's a bit sad that these beautiful plants, which should be growing in the canopy of an exotic rainforest, are for sale in our supermarkets.
Of course, many of them end up in good homes. But as they're so often given as gifts in place of cut flowers, do they too end up on the compost heap after they've bloomed?
A friend of mine was once a florist, and I regularly used to rescue the unsold pot plants that 'went over', before being consigned to landfill. I'd take them home, dust them down and (usually) give them a new lease of life.
Once I took home a moth orchid, Phalaenopsis, whose flower spike had died. It was otherwise in perfect health, so I decided to see how hard it would be to encourage a new one to grow. This was a few years ago, before I really knew what I was doing, but I didn't do too badly: I cut the stem down to just above a node and put it in my bathroom.
Bathrooms provide the perfect conditions for growing orchids because they're warm and steamy - although they must have a source of natural light. Tropical orchids require warm, humid conditions to grow in, and don't like sitting in water. They're epiphytic, growing on trees in their natural habitat, so they need to be grown in bark, or specialist orchid compost, in clear, plastic containers to expose the roots to light and air.
I didn't pay my orchid that much attention - I wiped the dust from its leaves occasionally, fed it with tepid water and waited. It was months before the poor thing showed any sign of flowering, but, eventually, a new spike began to grow. It grew really well over the next few weeks, and I lovingly watered it, washed down its leaves and had lots of baths to keep the humidity going in the bathroom. The spike produced four or five flower buds, and then, after what seemed like another age, the buds finally opened to reveal the most perfect, pink delicate blooms. These lasted a whole day, before I knocked the pot over and broke the flower spike off.
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