How to make your orchids flower for months
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Flowers | 25 comments
I can now understand why some people get obsessed with orchids. These are definitely flowers with attitude. We have two types of orchid living in the cottage. Phalaenopsis and one Dendrobium. Their flowers remind me of the heads of mythical beasts. Open-mouthed in a chatty rather than a snappy way. If you care for them properly, their extended flowering period almost guarantees that eventually they will start to work their magic and make their presence felt.
Our orchids live in the bathroom, on a deep windowsill. They seem to like the steam and the diffused light through the window. One of them has been flowering constantly since Christmas 2005.
My orchid fascination started late. For many years I only saw waxiness. I thought that people who became obsessed with them were weird. To me, orchids seemed vaguely malevolent, like Tobermory, that bitchy cat in Saki’s tale.
Then I was given an orchid. Danny was away at the time. As it sat on the kitchen over breakfast and supper, I gradually warmed to it. Its compost seemed rather dry so I watered it every day, not realising that I was killing it. Death came quickly. The flowers started to look very seedy. Then the buds went yellow and dropped off within days.
I considered buying a silk orchid or small silk trees. Seraphina has some very pretty ones in her sitting room.
A few months later we went to stay with our friends Margaret and Tony in Whitehaven. They were not orchid buffs when had they lived next door here in Cheveley. Their move to Cumbria had initiated many new interests. A vegetable garden and a passion for orchids, were the ones that stood out for me. They have a large sunny dining room and every windowsill was crammed with pots of orchids. All healthy and singing with flowers. It was January. I was amazed.
“The secret is not to ignore them and treat them badly.” Margaret shares without being preachy. “These are different to a normal houseplant. They are jungle flowers. The roots don’t like being wet.”
Margaret explained her two secrets. Use orchid fertiliser and immerse each orchid pot in a solution of water and fertiliser every two weeks for a few minutes. Then drain each pot well before returning them to their containers. Never let the orchids stand in water. Use a mister on the leaves, every now and then.
When we were leaving, she pressed a container of orchid fertiliser
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Hi! I have had a lovely white and yellow centred orchid flowering from the same spike for 7 months! Is this unusual? The flowers never fade and still look as fresh as they did 7 months ago, it is a real one by the and its never been fed, just a splash of tap water weekly! The spike is laden with flowers.
Hi Jo
Yrs the secret is in the feeding and watering.
my orchids never flower but i have just started using bloom food so i am going to see what happens
Thanks Kate for your kind reply. This is very helpful.
Thanks fn for providing me a forum to ask questions.
Hi Farah
Thanks for asking the question on my site and thank you Kate(UK) for answering the question so succinctly.
I didn’t know how to handle dead spikes, thank you so much for giving an old orchid another chance!
Cut it back to above the next swelling bud below where the flowers were- if you look at the stem you will see that there are small leaf-like swellings on it, these will grow onto new flower shoots if you keep your orchid happy! This will only happen if the stem is still green/purple, if it has dried out to light brown and died back, cut it down to about an inch long and wait, a new flower spike will grow from between the leaves at the base of the plant.
Hello, we have a beautiful orchid with two long stem with six flowers on each stem. One set of flowers r totally gone now. Should we leave the stem or should we cut it?
Thanks,
Farah
Yes.
I have 1 Phalaenopsis and 1 Dendrobium “Berry Oda”. The Dendrobium dropped all it’s flowers so I nipped off the stalks just above the leaves. Did I do the right thing or not? When the flowers on the Phalaenopsis were finally wilting I cut off the stem just above the 2nd node, was that the right thing to do?
There was a very good article on looking after orchids in the Times two weeks ago- have a look on their website, it should be there in the gardening section.