How do you grow orchids? You might want to read Tao Wangling's "On Growing Orchids" from the Ming Dynasty.

        Kuaiji has many orchids, but those produced in Fujian are prized. The method of growing them: they like moisture but dislike wetness, like dryness but fear the sun, like wind but avoid cold, like a pampered daughter of a wealthy family, particularly full of moods and hard to please. I once heard it said that all other flowers thrive on filth when watered, but Fujian orchids alone use tea liquid, believing that among grasses and trees none is as fragrant as the orchid, and among things clean in taste none is as tea, their natures being akin and thus suited.

In the Xiu Garden there were two pots of orchids, watered according to the method, yet their leaves grew shorter by the day and their color withered by the day, and before long one of them had dried up. But those planted by other households were luxuriant and bore many flowers. I went to ask the reason, and told them what I had heard. The guest sighed and said: "How mistaken you are in your method! Now, those that nourish people with sweetness are the hundred grains; those that delight people with fragrance are the hundred plants. As for what is called sweet and what is called fragrant, do you truly understand them? When decay reaches its extreme, it becomes wondrous again - all things are thus. Long ago there was a man who caught a turtle, saying that the turtle's spirit meant it did not eat. He stored it in a box for ten days and then opened it, and the turtle was nearly dead. From this we can say that all claims that certain creatures do not eat, and that certain plants and trees do not thrive on filth, are absurd. You are obstinate and drowned in what you have heard; that your orchids dried up is already too late to remedy."

After I returned home, I was displeased, still thinking what I had heard was not absurd and my method not mistaken. But then I doubted, saying: things indeed may after a long time change their preferences and lose their former nature, transforming secretly in ways that cannot be known. The Li Sao says: "The orchid and angelica have changed and are no longer fragrant; the sweet flag and hui have transformed into thatch." For they are fragile, proud and wayward, displaying their fragrance to prize themselves; I had indeed worried that they were hard to grow, but did not anticipate that they would change so easily. Alas! Thereupon I had a boy cut the withered parts and water the dried ones, carry manure and soak them, and then they flourished.

                                  The twenty-fifth day of the fifth month, the jiawu year of the Wanli era