How do orchids grow

The first step with any store-bought orchid is to enjoy the bloom. Don't attempt to re-pot a flowering plant. After the bloom is done, go ahead and cut off the dead flower spike with sterile snippers and repot the plant. Orchids should be potted into specialized orchid pots in an orchid mixture. Orchid pots feature wide drainage slits so water will literally run through the pot. They are widely available. Orchid potting mixture is usually composed of several chunky ingredients, including pine bark, charcoal, and even styrofoam.

To re-pot your orchid, follow these steps:. Remove it from the plastic pot and carefully remove as much of the moss as you can. Healthy roots should be white and firm, with a small green growing point. Cut away any shriveled, rotten or blackened roots. Set the plant into the pot and fill in around it with potting mixture. The plant should be firmly situated, but it will not be completely anchored.

Eventually, new roots will grow through the potting mixture and attach to the pot itself, thus anchoring your plant. Once it's re-potted, find a good spot. An east-facing window with a few hours of mild morning sun is perfect. To provide the necessary humidity and catch run-off water, put the plant into a wide, deep tray and fill the tray with gravel. Caring for your orchid is pretty simple. During the summer months, water it weekly and heavily. Let the water drench the roots and fill up the pebble tray.

It doesn't hurt every so often to put the plant in the kitchen sink and really soak it down. Don't worry, you won't kill it as long as it's allowed to dry out afterward. During the growing season, feed it weekly with a weak solution of a powder or liquid fertilizer.

To learn more about growing orchids and how to care for your Phalaenopsis orchid, check out our complete guide to orchid care. Shipping Orders will ship in business days. Pricing and ship times adjusted due to higher volume and safety measures at this time. Get weekly watering reminders so you'll never forget.

Sign Up Now ». Back to Top. How Do Orchids Grow? Fascinating Life Cycle of Growing Orchids. October 9, share. The Orchid Life Cycle 1. The Orchid Continues Growing At this point, the orchid has been growing for one year, but it still needs several more months to develop.

The First Blooms Emerge This is our favorite part! The Orchid Goes Through Trials We want to make sure all of our growing orchids have a consistent size, appearance, quality and health no matter where you buy them. On the other hand, in my very sunny northern Utah climate I have been able to grow lower light species, and even get them to flower, in a bright window on the north side of my house — where they were exposed to bright, indirect light.

Generally, leaves should be medium to lime green in color. In this case it should be provided with a bit more shade, moved further from the window, or placed in a window that gets less sun during the day.

This is perhaps the most important part of growing these plants — do not plant your orchid in potting soil. Repeat after me: Do not plant your orchid in potting soil. Potting soil will keep the roots of the plant too wet and will not allow them exposure to the air they require.

With very few exceptions, these flowers grow — in slightly acidic conditions — in the crevices of trees, on rocks, or in shallow, nutrient-poor organic matter on the forest floor. Your growing medium can be comprised of just one of the above materials or it can be made up of a mixture of two or more of them. You can learn more about the finer points of choosing or creating your own orchid growing medium in our guide coming soon!

It contains coconut husk chips as well as small sponge rock, also known as perlite. You can find it for purchase in a four-quart bag from rePotme via Amazon. After selecting a growing medium, watering is probably the second most important aspect of caring for these houseplants. If you water too often, their roots can rot, which will prevent them from taking up the water they need, eventually causing them to die from dehydration.

Since different cultivars have different water requirements, you will need to get to know your plant and determine how often it needs to be watered. You can start by watering your orchid once a week and then fine tune this once you see how quickly it is drying out.

Pick your plant up and get to know how heavy it feels after watering. Keep picking it up every day for a week or ten days. If it feels exceptionally light, you have probably waited too long, and should provide water sooner in the future. Some prefer to stay evenly moist all the time, such as paphiopedilums, and may need to be watered twice a week. Others, such as cattleyas, like to dry out between waterings and may only need to be watered every two weeks.

Water your orchids in the morning so they have ample time to dry before nightfall, and use tepid, good quality water. The gold standard is water that has been filtered through reverse osmosis. You can also use clean, fresh rainwater. If you have public water, you may want to filter it since municipal tap water can contain any number of unknown chemical residues, in addition to chlorine.

If your plant is in a decorative cachepot as well as its plastic growers pot, remove the decorative pot before watering. I like to place my orchids in a bowl one by one, and pour about a cup or so of tepid water over the potting medium and roots, let it drain through the pot, and then repeat a few more times until it feels like the pot is heavy. You can learn more about orchid watering requirements in our guide coming soon! Judy White at the American Orchid Society recommends using a NPK liquid fertilizer diluted at quarter strength during regular growth, and a NPK formula in autumn to encourage blooming.

Once a month, skip the fertilizer and give the roots a good rinse when you water instead, to flush fertilizer salts from the roots and growing medium. To flush fertilizer salts away, place the plant in your sink or bathtub without a saucer underneath, and water the plant with fresh water amounting to at least three times the volume of the pot, allowing the liquid to drain away. On the other hand, if you have a terrestrial species, you may want to skip fertilizing altogether.

Personally, I like to make my fertilizing regimen a bit more natural, so I use a tea made from earthworm castings for a gentle, slow-release fertilizer which has the added bonus of beneficial microbes. You simply steep the bag in lukewarm water for four to 24 hours and then water your plant with this concoction. Most orchids do well in an environment with humidity levels between 40 and 70 percent. I use the Goabroa digital humidity gauge, available on Amazon. Goabroa Digital Humidity Gauge Monitor.

In winter when the air is dry, or for those of us who live in an arid climate year-round, there are a few ways you can increase humidity for these plants:. A humidity tray is simply a waterproof tray lined with a layer of pebbles or gravel and filled with water.

Place plants on saucers before placing on the humidity tray to reduce any chance of letting their pots sit in water. Some have a grid that fits snugly into the tray instead — you pour water into it, and it evaporates throughout the day, humidifying the air around your houseplants.

According to Greg Griffis and Peter Zale, PhD, at Longwood Gardens, if you see mist hanging in the air, it means the air is oversaturated and you should reduce your efforts to increase humidity. But the main problem with misting is that a wet orchid will be more likely to succumb to bacterial or fungal disease. Water could drip down the leaves and pool in the crown of your plant, leading to crown rot. In nature, many phalaenopsis species grow from trees hanging down or sideways to prevent water from pooling in their crowns.

Going hand in hand with humidity, these plants also need good air movement. This is particularly important in more humid climates and seasons, or when growing in greenhouses. The more humid your environment, the more air movement is needed. And the inverse is also true — in drier climates or weather, aim for less air movement.

An overhead fan, or an oscillating floor fan directed away from the plants, will generally provide enough air movement. In the wild, many species grow with their roots exposed to the air, so air circulation is important not only for the foliage of these plants but also for their roots. Using a special pot with side slits can help get air to the roots, and these provide better drainage as well.

You can learn more about the special containers used for growing these plants in our article on orchid pots. Scheduling this maintenance for your weekly watering time is a good idea. Gently insert a stake into your growing medium and attach the spike to it with a twist tie. While many sources recommend trimming spikes on spent flowers, old spikes will sometimes rebloom year after year. So while you get to know your new plant, you may want to leave the flower spike intact to see if your plant will bloom from old spikes.

For phalaenopsis, trim the spike about an inch from the soil. For other genera, be sure to consult specific care information for your genus before pruning. Orchids are not repotted to move them to a larger pot in most cases, but instead, to provide them with fresh growing medium. This may be the exact same pot, filled with new growing medium. The period after your flowers have faded and when there is new root growth is a good time to repot. You may also want to repot when you bring a new plant home to ensure it is growing in an appropriate potting medium, as described above.

To repot, remove the plant from its pot and gently loosen the roots to remove the old potting medium. This may feel a bit counterintuitive if you are used to being careful not to overhandle plant roots while repotting houseplants or transplanting garden veggies.

Trim unhealthy roots if needed, place roots into the new or same pot, and fill with fresh growing medium. Some growers like to water right away, and others prefer to wait two or three days before watering. If you trimmed any rotten roots from your plant, wait a few days before watering.

For a full step-by-step guide to repotting your orchid, check out our guide. Orchid flowers come in a huge array of hues, including whites, purples, pinks, reds, oranges, yellows — even browns and greens — as well as striped, spotted, or harlequin patterns. But before you choose a color, make sure you select a variety or species that will adapt well to the conditions you have available for it. Cattleyas are known as corsage orchids due to their widespread use in the cut flower industry, beautifying prom goers and wedding ceremonies for decades.

They are epiphytic or lithophytic and are native to the Americas. These cultivars are considered easy to grow at home. They bloom in late winter or early spring and their blossoms can last for a month.

Cattleya flowers are large and showy, available in shades of white, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, and green. Many of them are fragrant. In order to produce flowers, cattleyas need nighttime temperatures that are degrees cooler than daytime temps.

They can be large, growing up to two feet tall, but there are some mini cattleyas that will fit nicely on your windowsill. Humidity levels of 50 percent or higher are best. The potting medium should have large particles to allow the roots to dry easily. Mature plants should be allowed to dry out between waterings. Cattleyas prefer higher light — place them near a south-facing window where they are exposed to bright, indirect light.

It is considered a mini cattleya. This hybrid produces bright tricolored flowers that are magenta, white, and yellow. You can purchase one of their blooming-sized plants in a five-inch container via Amazon.