Orchid-growing experience: If I could start over, how would I grow orchids?

Author: Guanlan

When I first started loving orchids, my enthusiasm was very high. I read books until my eyes were dazzled, and I would be so excited over a single flower photo that I couldn't sleep for a long time. I heard that growing orchids could also make money, and my desire for color and greed exploded beyond control. My head heated up and I bought whatever I liked on sight. In the cultivation and growing stages, there were problems everywhere. Some died, some were damaged. Looking back after several years, not many flowers had bloomed, quite a few plants had died, and my mood easily fluctuated with the death of the plants. After all that fussing, I still hadn't achieved anything worthwhile. Once I was too worn out to keep being tossed around and the madness had passed, I reflected on my orchid-growing process and very much wished I could start all over again.

Perhaps some orchid friends have had similar experiences and feelings as I have.

If we could start growing orchids over again, how many detours could we avoid? If we could start growing orchids over again, how exactly should we grow them?

Selecting varieties: At the stage when you don't yet understand the nature of orchids, pick up a few pots of traditional varieties of spring orchid (Cymbidium goeringii) or boat orchid (Cymbidium ensifolium) priced around 10 yuan or so, or even hybrid orchids, as long as they have fragrance. Once you understand orchid nature and have learned to grow them, then buy famous varieties costing tens to hundreds of yuan. You can have one or two varieties costing around a thousand yuan, but the total number of varieties should not exceed twenty or thirty; any more and management becomes very tiring. The speed of acquiring new plants should not be too fast either; two or three a year is enough, developing in a rolling, cyclical way. Don't trust photos, even for the new famous varieties that are hotly promoted right now, don't trust photos, because that is only an instant. When choosing varieties, your own liking comes first, and reliable flower quality comes second. Looking at photos is not understanding flower quality; if you don't understand the flower quality, you'd better not buy it. For many flowers, you won't know their defects unless you grow them, and sellers generally won't mention these. It is best to see the actual flowers of an orchid friend, who will tell you the real situation rather than just giving you a sales pitch. When starting to grow orchids, don't be greedy for a complete collection of varieties. There are many orchids with great reputations that, once actually in hand and grown, turn out to be just so-so. Orchids never feel as good as when you were looking at the photos. Gambling on unbloomed wild orchids is even more something to avoid; those that could be won by gambling would not be put online for sale, let alone reach new orchid friends to buy. Saving the money to buy a proper, legitimate famous variety is better than anything. But this is probably futile to say; everyone has to go through the process from madness to calm.

Growing: Although everyone has their own methods for growing orchids, orchid friends who are not in production areas and do not yet understand orchid nature had best still follow the book's requirement of a 70% Kanuma stone / 30% Satsuma soil mix, with at most a little added tree fern for organic material.If using tree bark, it must be fully decomposed and boiled at high temperature, otherwise many plants will mysteriously die and you won't even find the reason (this is my own bloody experience, I won't go into detail). Don't reject fungicides and insecticides. Natural orchid growing is certainly good, but it requires all kinds of subtle details to be handled well and a certain level of effortless mastery before you can do as you please. No matter how clean or how strong the plants you acquire are, it is best to soak them in a proportionally prepared fungicide and insecticide solution for half a day to a day. As long as the concentration is within 0.3%, it is safe; don't worry that soaking a bit longer will cause problems. This way, the growing medium is clean and easy to manage, and pest and disease invasion is blocked. As long as the plants you buy are the correct variety and do not carry viral disease (unlike bacteria and fungi, viruses cannot be killed), then you can basically ensure that the risk of normal growing has been controlled to a minimum. For routine watering, tap water is fine. Never use vegetable-washing water, rice-washing water, or fish-tank water (they either carry pests or disease). When watering, you can mix in medicine, fertilizer, or orchid fungi. As long as the medicine and fertilizer concentration does not exceed 0.2-0.3%, it is safe (a simple ratio is roughly one gram of medicine or fertilizer per cola bottle). For orchid fungi, just a little according to the ratio is enough; too much is also harmful. As for fertilizer, to be safe I feel it is better to use more inorganic fertilizer, since organic fertilizer is also a breeding ground for pathogens. Slow-release fertilizer and bone charcoal can be mixed into the growing medium. I personally once roasted dog manure and mixed it in, and the effect was not bad (in short, anything sterilized at high temperature is more reassuring than something merely described as decomposed; if bought decomposed organic fertilizer carries even a little pathogen, it can send you instantly back to square one).

Division: The reason I bring this up separately is that many orchid friends are obsessively tidy and can't stand other people's old plants (I have this problem too). After the plants they bought send up new shoots, the next year they can't wait to separate the new plants from the old ones, because after all they are their own children and look more pleasing. But this often goes against the laws of orchid growth. The pseudobulbs of first-year new shoots are not mature enough; separating them creates large wounds and makes them prone to infection and death. And after the old pseudobulbs are cleared away, if the wounds are not handled well, they are also prone to infection, causing the death of both new and old plants, and the introduction fails. Even if the new shoot does not get infected, because it lacks the nutrients provided by the old pseudobulbs, it seems relatively difficult for a single new shoot to produce strong growth, and it takes one or two generations before it can regain vigor. Therefore, wound treatment in division is an important link related to the success or failure of introduction. I used to think that air-drying, applying medicine, or cauterizing and sealing the wound with wax could prevent infection, yet many still mysteriously died. This year, after seeing a post by the orchid friend Linzhou Lanchi, I remembered that no matter how well the wound is treated after dividing the plants, the area around the pseudobulb wound must not be filled with growing medium; it needs to be air-dried and grown that way for a period. This is a lesson learned through blood and tears.

Now I cannot return to the stage of starting over; I am still dealing with problems left over from the past. Let the plants that are doomed to die die; dispose of what can be given away or dealt with, and travel light. With the later plants, strictly control admission and grow them carefully. Perhaps this is also another kind of starting over.