Awkward Orchids

Adventures with orchids www.facebook.com/AwkwardOrchids

[awkward-orchids-blog]

Mokara jairak white

[awkward-orchids-blog]

chiloschista spp.

[awkward-orchids-blog]

Spring is back, and so are the orchids ! Cattleya Intermedia

[awkward-orchids-blog]

Tolumnia (Oncidium Equitant) Jairak Rainbow 'Red'

[awkward-orchids-blog]

Brassidium betty shiraki

The flower spike for this orchid was over a meter long!

[awkward-orchids-blog]

I just thought I would post a quick update on a couple of the orchids that I posted about over the past few weeks; the Dendrobium (left) that had the rotting cane that I removed and the other orchid that I divided and repotted (right). 

Both are doing really well! As you can see in the picture, not only did the Dendrobium recover from the rotting cane (after it was removed), but it’s now pushing out a new cane to replace the one that was lost!

Also, dividing the Miltonidium went great as well, the larger half of the orchid is putting out 5 new pseudobulbs, and the smaller half that came off the division hasn’t yet put out new pseudobulbs, but has gotten a lot more new root growth.

[awkward-orchids-blog]

'Cirrhopetelum (Bulbophyllum) Rothchildianum' Amazing flower, but smells like a ripe mound of garbage.

[everytimeflowers]

[awkward-orchids-blog]

A beautiful picture sent to me by everytimeflowers

[awkward-orchids-blog]

Making the switch to better water

After about a month of researching RO (reverse osmosis) water filters and trying to figure out what was best, I decided that I could not be bothered anymore, and bought the first one on eBay. And I have to say, I'm really impressed. I only bought a 3 stage one (you can get them with a number of different stages which refer to different filters) but mine dropped the TDS of my water from 180ppm to 0-1 ppm. 

The only downside is that the water is basic/alkaline after going through the filter. Most orchids prefer a pH like rain water around 6-7, but the pH of my water is 8ish. However the fertilisers I use will bring the pH back down, and I'll use small amounts of tap water to buffer it (to prevent the pH from dropping too much). Another benefit of slightly acidic water is that it increases nutrient availability to the plant - I.e. Most nutrients are dissolved better into the water and thus are more available to orchids at pH of around 6.5. 

I decided to make the change after observing mineral deposits on some of my orchids media and around the pots. Here is one of the worst ones.. 

The white crusting on the bark and around the base of the pot is the mineral deposits from my hard tap water, and my poor little Psychopsis orchid has been suffering root burn and subsequent slow growth because of it!

First thing I'm doing with the water is flushing them out to remove some of these build ups. 

With fertilising, I'm aiming for 120 ppm of nitrogen - and then I'll work on the rest of the nutrients. But I'm using a balanced fertiliser for now so that the rest of the nutrients will also be supplied in good values, including things like calcium and magnesium which are present in tap water, but would have been removed during filtration but are still important to orchid health. I also use nitrogen ('growth') and phosphorous ('bloom', but also good to help develop strong roots) based fertilisers which I use on and off depending on the time of year and what the plants need for their current growth cycle. 

 TO CALCULATE YOUR OWN PPM MEASUREMENT Just say you have a fertilizer at 20:6:20=N:P:K To find out how much ppm you are supplying if you dissolve 1 gram of it in 1 litre, you simply multiply them all by 10 I.e 200:60:200 ppm. 

 If you want to know how that above calculation works; 1 gram = 1000 mg As there's N:P:K 20:6:20, this means there is 20% nitrogen, 6% phosphorous and 20% potassium.  So in that 1 gram of fertiliser, there is 200 mg of nitrogen. And 1ppm is equivalent to 1mg dissolved in 1 litre.  So 200mg in 1 litre is the same as 200 ppm. And etc for the others.

I’ll keep updating on whether or not I see improvements by using this water.

[awkward-orchids-blog]

Lc. (Laeliocattleya) ‘Trick or treat’ x Enc (encyclia) cordigera

Scented orchid - it smells like roses. I don’t have many orchids in the Cattleya alliance (I mean I probably should given they are quite suited to my climate..) But this is how I look after this orchid, the other othere orchids I have from this family.

Water; I allow them to just dry out between watering,. and when the new growths are mature, I reduce watering a little more so they stay dryer for a little longer between waterings- apparently this is meant to help with bud formation.

Temperature and light; They are a warm growing orchid and prefer temperatures around 15-30 degrees Celsius (or 59-86 degrees F). They enjoy medium to high light levels, even a little direct sun in the mornings and late afternoon when the sun isn't too hot. You’ll know its getting enough sun if the leaves are medium-green, or even when they have a bit of a red tint to them.

Fertilizing: they are meant to get high nitrogen fertilizers during periods of growth (i.e. after the flowers are going and the new growths are forming), and then switching to a high phosphorus fertilizer in early autumn to help ‘harden’ new growth and help with the formation of new flower spike for next season. only fertilize rarely in winter. These fertilizers are normally given at 1/4 to 1/2 the recommended strength on the bottle, once a week. 

I used to water/fertilize all my orchids like this but I began having a problem with root tips dying (which is very sad because orchid roots are one of the sexiest things on an orchid!) and so I bought this little $10 PPM meter from ebay (which measures the amount of dissolved salts in your water) and found out I have hard water - so I was burning my orchid roots by using both my hard water and fertilizer on top of that. And yes, in an ideal world I would be using rain water - but it doesn’t rain much around here. So currently I am using half de-mineralised water and half tap water with good results until I get a RO (reverse osmosis) water system (which I’m hoping will be here this week!)

[awkward-orchids-blog]

Oncidium Ruth’s Rainbow (Brown and pink)

[awkward-orchids-blog]

A mini-minature phalaenopsis!

To be honest, I have never really been a huge fan of phalaenopsis orchids. It was the first type of orchids that I ever owned, and they were definitely the reason why I started learning more about orchids, but I always found them a little bland compared to all these other orchids you can get. 

 I think that changed though when I found a few ‘species’ of phalaenopsis orchids for sale. All the phalaenopsis orchids I have grown up until I found these ones are just random, no-ID hybrids. But when I saw this orchid in particular I was amazed at how small a flowering plant could be! 

For a size comparison, here is a regular flowering sized phalaenopsis, next to this Phalaenopsis Delicoisa 

 Anyway so now how I look after these bad boys 

Light: they prefer bright indirect light, or ‘bright shade’ as I’ve seen it written somewhere else. Due to these requirements they are really easy to grow indoors. In fact they are the only orchid I currently grow indoors because they just seem to love it. 

Temperature: They like temperatures that we feel comfortable at (10-25 degrees Celsius). Obviously if you live in cold climates where it frosts and you want to grow them outside, these orchids won’t be very ideal. Likewise if you live in hot climates it’s also not a very good idea.. I once tried growing a phalaenopsis outside to see if my climate permitted it, but by the end of the day the flowers had basically melted off my plant and the leaves were all droopy..

Watering: allow the plant to NEARLY dry between waterings. You don’t want to let them go completely dry because unlike some other kinds of orchids, phalaenopsis don’t have any water storage organs (like pseudobulbs) other than their leaves. I will say though that I went away for a month last Christmas, and the person looking after my orchids didn’t know about the phalaenopsis that was sitting in my bedroom, so it didn’t get any water (in summer) for a whole month. It was in pretty bad condition when I came back, but it came back strong and has some pretty sexy new roots growing on it now.. I find the easiest way to tell how much water they need is to pot them in clear plastic pots - that way you can see the roots and the media and how wet they are. Wet healthy phalaenopsis roots will be green (usually), when they start to dry they start to turn a duller green to a silver, and this is the time to water them. Another method I use for my black pots is to put a wooden skewer in the media (careful of the roots!), when the skewer is approaching dryness or is dry, you should water. 

 Health issues: I haven’t had a health problem yet with a phalaenopsis. I have heard that they can get crown rot if you leave water in the centre of the plant, but if you’re careful with watering this shouldn’t happen. They are though pretty susceptible to root rot (as most orchids), so you shouldn’t leave the orchid sitting in water. My orchids do well in a medium grade bark which provides lots of drainage. Another way to prevent this is to increase air circulation (which I’ll talk about in another post later). Overall though I think the phalaenopsis are a pretty resistant orchid, I don’t think another one of my orchids would tolerate the rough times I’ve given some of my phalaenopsis’:P

[awkward-orchids-blog]

Repotting and dividing!

I bought this Miltonidium (Mtdm.) Goodale Moir ‘Golden Afternoon’ a month or two ago in bloom, and now that it’s been done with blooming for a while I decided that I wanted to repot it. It was potted in a mixture of peat moss, bark, styrofoam, some other kind of foam, perlite, and coconut husk. I personally don’t like having my orchids potted in peat moss. I believe that it’s a bit too acidic (which is normally fine for orchids as they tend to do best in slightly acidic conditions), but it also doesn’t allow for good air flow.

The best time to repot orchids is after it has finished flowering - when the new growths are starting to develop, but new roots haven’t begun to form yet. This is generally when the plant is most active and is most capable of dealing with any kinds of stress.

So how I go about re-potting my orchids is I first remove the orchid from the pot, and attempt to gently remove the media from the root mass. Normally this isn’t too hard, however when the substrate is really packed in there like mine was - it can be pretty challenging. Sometimes wetting it or soaking the root mass in a bowl of tepid water can help.

After I cleared all the old mix from the roots (well, most of it...), I decided to divide the plant as it had more than 6 pseudobulbs.

To divide a plant, you want to make sure you have at least 3 mature growths per division. Any less and the pant might not be strong enough to cope. You then look for a natural division between the groups of pseudobulbs and either attempt to pull them apart at the division, or cut it.

After doing this, I sprayed the root masses with undiluted 3% hydrogen peroxide (the kind you buy at the supermarkets). This acts as a disinfectant and is very safe to use. Once the initial reaction has occurred (which is the fizzing noise you hear), the only thing that remains is water.

I then potted my orchids into two new pots using a mixture of small bark, perlite and sphagnum moss.

[awkward-orchids-blog]

Seeing as this is my first post and not many people will see it, I thought I would talk about something fairly common - rotting plants. This plant is a 'Dendrobium Constance X Frasers hope spiral' orchid that I bought at an orchid fair last week. It had some sort of damage to it when I bought it and as a result started to rot..

So what I do when I see canes or pseudobulbs that are rotten is I sterilise a knife or scissors (under a flame for 30 seconds or more, and then cool it by running under water), and cut off the rotten part until I see healthy green tissue. This plant was easy, I cut right at the joining of the new growth to the older cane and it was green. On the cut surface I apply cinnamon powder with a Q-tip, which acts as a natural fungicide and protects the wound from becoming infected. It’s also important to keep in mind that cinnamon is very drying, so don’t get it on the root. If you do, just blow it off. After that, you have to be careful when watering for a couple of weeks, and try to make sure the cut surface with the cinnamon on it doesn’t get wet. It also helps to keep the plant on the drier side in general, and in less brightly lit conditions. Hopefully once my plant recovers I’ll be seeing some new growth on this little guy!