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I finally did it. I bought two orchids today. Inexpensive Phalaenopsis that I will strive to not kill.
All my life, I've wanted orchids, but I've never had a place to keep them. This house I am in now has a place in the kitchen where I think they will be happy. They looks so gorgeous there.
I confess to feeling quite intimidated.
I started at Costco, where they usually have lovely large orchid plants. Nope. Not today. So I picked up two youngsters at the Grocery Outlet. Pretty things, but I have never had any luck at all with plants from the Grocery Outlet and these little babies were dripping wet. Not a good start.
But I will try with them and then in a bit, as I get my confidence up, I will buy a better one.
Fingers crossed. Wish the little guys luck. Poor things. Bad start and an inexperienced owner.
My best advice is to neglect them instead of over watering! I learned the hard way. If you think they need water - wait a few days or a week and then water - lightly.
Also, my phals need more sun than I thought.
I have several that have bloomed 5-6 times and I still get excited every time!
Are they Moth Orchids, if yes, they are really easily to take care. I ignored one and it came back, so I ended up buying several last year. I water them, and the bloom. Only thing I did was put them at a sunny window. In the past I never got them to bloom. Now they do. Magic.
Phals (aka moth orchids) really are the very easiest of all orchids to take care of. Because they have aerial roots in moss and bark I actually find them easier to take care of than other house plants that require soil for the roots. No pests in the soil or on the plants is one of the bonuses of keeping phalaenopsis.
I water them every 10 days or so and mine sit in a window where they get bright light and dappled sunlight but not full intense direct sunlight. They live in ordinary room temperature. My oldest (and first) one is now 20 years old and the day I got it (I treated myself for my birthday) I was hooked and have been for 20 years. It was just a tiny baby when I got it but it has grown and grown and now it grows incredibly tall spikes that have many branches on them, like branches on a tree.
I have all of them in just the right southeast window location so that the winter/spring flower spikes and blooms on most of them stay in bloom for 5 or 6 months at a stretch, then they drop their blooms, grow a new leaf on each plant then set new flower spikes for summer/autumn. So they usually flower twice a year for me.
The picture below doesn't show all of them but this photo was taken yesterday. My newest addition is the tall white one with the pink and red patches and polka dots (on the far left on the screen). All of these have been in bloom now since the middle of December and they will continue to bloom and set new flowers for at least another 2 - 3 months before the spikes die and then they'll each quickly grow a new leaf. Then they will set new flower spikes again for the summer/autumn months but the summer/autumn flowers won't last quite as long as the winter/spring flowers because they don't like the heat of summer, they prefer cooler, ordinary room temperatures, so will ordinarily only last for 3 - 4 months if the summer/autumn months are really hot.
I love all plants but I love my orchids most of all. There is something mystical and addictive about them for me.
Don't allow your new Phalaenopsis orchids to intimidate you! They really are quite easy plants to grow. Just remember not to water them until the pot is almost (but not quite) completely dry. Then give them a good drenching. And fertilize very lightly!
Good luck on your new plants, Oregonwoodsmoke! Don't worry about orchids being fussy, once you find the right spot, they're pretty maintenance free.
There's one here on the front lanai. That faces the ocean and gets bright sunlight but not direct sunlight. It's set in a small aquarium since there's too much wind there for it to be absolutely happy out on it's own. It keeps blooming there so I guess it's happy.
It got stuck in there with some tiny African violets and seems to still be in there so someplace happy for African violets seems orchid happy? The orchids out in the yard seem happier:
The yard orchids are oncidium orchids, although we just usually call them 'dancing ladies' since that's way easier to pronounce and spell. They get pretty much zero care, although I do throw some bunny manure on them occasionally.
You can also abuse orchids and they don't seem to mind as long as the abuse is the hands off kind of abuse. I'm not sure what kind of orchid these are, exactly. Someone gave them to me as mere seedlings.
They were stuck in that plastic window box (which was originally dark green) and put outside a window on the sunny side of a house. Sometime somewhat soon after that, we bought a house in town and moved to town and the orchids were more or less forgotten on the side of the house. Eight years later, we finally sold the house (it had morphed into a rental, but the orchids were still there. The renters didn't do any orchid maintenance, they just left them there and ignored them.) So, the orchids finally moved to town and now they're being ignored over here. They seem happy with that.
This is Hawaii, though, so our 'outside' may be more orchid friendly than most places. Orchids seem happy with high humidity and fairly steady temperatures between 55 to 95 degrees. If we're being nice to the orchids, we tie them to a tree and let them hang out there. Keeps them from being mowed over, among other things.
^^^Hotzcatz, the yellow orchids in that last picture (the ones you can't identify) are in the Cattleya alliance. They are no doubt a complex hybrid with several species mixed in, but from the general shape of the flowers I'd hazard a guess they have a lost of Brassavola (probably B. digbyana or B. nodosa) in them.
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