Are wild orchids easy to grow? Hands-on experience teaches you how to get them established quickly

How do wild collected orchids get established as quickly as possible? Just do these few things well.

1. Pot them in spring and autumn, not in the cold of winter or the heat of summer, especially not in summer.

2. Before potting, trim the roots, cut the leaves and remove dead branches, so the orchid goes into the pot as clean as possible.

3. The most important point of all: if the orchid has just been collected from the mountain, absolutely do not soak it in medicated water to disinfect or sterilize it. If you soak the roots in medicated water and then it does not survive, do not ask me why.

4. Make the growing medium mimic its wild state, with three essential qualities: loose and breathable, moisture-retaining yet free-draining, and long-lasting in fertility.

5. Water less, water less, water less - important things must be said three times. Orchids like a humid space, but orchid roots do not like a wet environment inside the pot.

It should be said that wild orchids are the easiest of all orchid varieties to grow. They grow on the mountain with no human care at all, surviving entirely on their own adaptability.

Wild orchids have a strong ability to heal themselves from disease. On the mountain we also see wild orchids with disease, but we rarely see a whole plant die; at most one or two diseased shoots wither, and the other shoots are not infected. Yet once our home-grown orchids get sick, the whole pot is usually wiped out.

To grow wild orchids, first choose a good growing medium, ideally soil from the mountain where they originated plus some bark. Watering less is the key to growing wild orchids well, and there must be natural ventilation; for wild orchids, ventilation matters more than water and fertilizer. Also pay attention to matching the light, so that the morning sun can reach them, and the orchid will not be hard to grow.

What Haoshe Farmer grows are all wild orchids. Anything with a name on the market, I do not grow. To me, those so-called famous varieties are nothing but slippers off a factory assembly line; I prefer the cloth shoes my own mother made.