Greetings from the Netherlands

[Monica Penders]

Hi. I'm Monica and I'm new here. I'm a Latina but I've lived in Europe for the past 18 years. I'm embarrassed to say that I totally suck when it comes to plants. Plants have always died in my care, until I discovered that orchids were the only plants that actually survived my home. It started with Phalaenopsis, but slowly I worked my way through Dendrobiums, Oncidiums, even a Brassia and yes one Paphiopedilum (which by the way is my favorite (I'm so in love with this one, it's just so cute).

I hit rock bottom when my orchids were starting to not look so good anymore, some even died. I've just come to the realization that I'm married I'm 43 years old and it's time I start learning about how to care for house plants. I see other people's homes nice and cosy with plants, I just love the way it looks. So I've decided that I'm going to start learning! I'm really committed this time! Not just with orchids but in general with houseplants.

So I started watching youtube videos and just reading lots of information online, on orchids to start with as these are the plants that I've got, and to see if I could "save" the ones that I got.

Step 1 was to repot, because I had honestly in years never repotted my orchids, and now I'm learning this is recommended to do every 2 years.

Step 2 figuring out when to water, how often, fertilizing ok so this thing about fertilizer, never used it in all the years I've had orchids.

So I hope to learn something here...

 

[Ray]

Welcome, Monica.

The #1 "trick" to growing orchids is understanding that they need both water and air at their roots. Unlike terrestrial plants that do their gas exchange through their leaves, orchids do the majority of that through their roots.

With your "never having been repotted" plants, there were likely two issues that developed: 1) the medium slowly decomposed and became too compact, holding water very well, but suffocating the roots, and 2) a considerable buildup of minerals from your water and fertilizer, plus plant wastes, which can become toxic to the plant. There are a lot of plants in Europe grown in passive hydroponics using LECA as the potting medium, so you might want to consider that. Paphs seem to do very well when grown using the technique dubbed "semi-hydroponics".

Don't stick rigidly to the "2-year" repotting schedule. That's probably OK, but your growing conditions and watering habits can affect the condition of the medium, so may require more frequent replacement.

As far as fertilizing is concerned, orchids a quite undemanding of mineral nutrition. When I grew in a greenhouse, I fed every time a I watered (via a metering pump) at 25 ppm N. Now that I retired, moved and downsized, my much smaller collection is out on my deck most of the year, and I feed once a week at 75 ppm N. Personally, I recommend more-, rather than less-frequent feeding, and never less often than once per two weeks, using 125 ppm N. There are folks who only feed monthly, and some that don't feed at all, but that just doesn't make much sense to me.

Don't let the "ppm N" term bother you. 6.9 divided by the %N on the fertilizer label will give you the ml of fertilizer per liter for 75, 9.2/%N for 100.

 

[Monica Penders]

Welcome, Monica.

The #1 "trick" to growing orchids is understanding that they need both water and air at their roots. Unlike terrestrial plants that do their gas exchange through their leaves, orchids do the majority of that through their roots.

With your "never having been repotted" plants, there were likely two issues that developed: 1) the medium slowly decomposed and became too compact, holding water very well, but suffocating the roots, and 2) a considerable buildup of minerals from your water and fertilizer, plus plant wastes, which can become toxic to the plant. There are a lot of plants in Europe grown in passive hydroponics using LECA as the potting medium, so you might want to consider that. Paphs seem to do very well when grown using the technique dubbed "semi-hydroponics".

Don't stick rigidly to the "2-year" repotting schedule. That's probably OK, but your growing conditions and watering habits can affect the condition of the medium, so may require more frequent replacement.

As far as fertilizing is concerned, orchids a quite undemanding of mineral nutrition. When I grew in a greenhouse, I fed every time a I watered (via a metering pump) at 25 ppm N. Now that I retired, moved and downsized, my much smaller collection is out on my deck most of the year, and I feed once a week at 75 ppm N. Personally, I recommend more-, rather than less-frequent feeding, and never less often than once per two weeks, using 125 ppm N. There are folks who only feed monthly, and some that don't feed at all, but that just doesn't make much sense to me.

Don't let the "ppm N" term bother you. 6.9 divided by the %N on the fertilizer label will give you the ml of fertilizer per liter for 75, 9.2/%N for 100.

Thanks. A lot of information. I got to let it all sink in. But yeah I'm definitely committed to learning.
You are right, many of my orchids the medium was sort of decomposing, some were really bad, others ok. But I'm so happy because I repotted them all spring-summer (it was a lot to do at once) but I'm glad to see that my Phalaenposis are definitely doing great (only one died) they're all making lots of new roots and new leaves too. And my one and only Paph is also doing good I think. So I'm positive.

Yeah I've heard about the semi-hydroponics, sounds interesting. Maybe in the future, as I've already repotted my orchids now. I think I will leave it for a while. Just try to get things right this time.

I'll definitely try the fertilizer. I've recently bought two from Orchid Focus, the Growth one and the Bloom one. I've got no orchids blooming right now, so I'll be using the Growth one then I suppose for now.

 

[Monica Penders]

By the way, just wanted to add that I'm super excited because I'm planning to go to an orchid nursery tomorrow.

I recently discovered that there's one near where I live. It's a webshop, but the nursery is open once a month, the last Saturday of the month and one can buy orchids at the actual nursery. I think this is so cool because I ordered an orchid once (it was an Oncidium) online, not from them but from another webshop, and I was so disappointed. The Oncidium was in really bad shape, and had rotten pseudobulbs. Since then I'm scared of buying online, so this is my chance to actually see what condition an orchid is in before deciding to buy one. Obviously one can get orchids at the supermarket, Ikea or the standard garden store but mostly the regular Phalaenposis and nothing wrong with that. All my orchids so far come from one of these shops (except the Oncidium I just mentioned, which I'm currently trying to save). But I just think it's cool to be able to go to an actual nursery.

I do live in the Netherlands anyway... famous for greenhouses and plants... but It's the only orchid nursery that's near my place.

 

[Guldal]

Hello Monica - and welcome

It's (almost) ALWAYS nice to go to a nursery - although it sometimes can be an expensive pastime! And if they are nice people and not too busy, they should be giving you good advice - and help you in respect to growth media, fertilizer, etc.

In the beginning I got some nice advice from a couple of books, too. A first and very helpfull book was by Gerd Röllke - I think it is nla, but it was translated into danish from german (and actually to this day, I think it's the most helpfull starter book, I've encountered)

Two other good ones from the beginning of my carrier as orchioholic was the following:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0903505673/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0618263268/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Good luck and kind regards from higher up on the Northern Hemisphere!
Jens

 

[P.K.Hansen]

Welcome from dane #2

 

[abax]

Welcome to ST Monica. We all started somewhere and reading,
experimenting and learning...and killing is part of the learning
process. Everybody here will help so ask lots of questions.

 

[Ray]

I've recently bought two from Orchid Focus, the Growth one and the Bloom one. I've got no orchids blooming right now, so I'll be using the Growth one then I suppose for now.

The concept behind a "Bloom" fertilizer is to switch to it a few months before a plant is due to bloom, but it's really nothing magic. You might consider reading this.

 

[likespaphs]

Hihi from MA

 

[NYEric]

Welcome from NYC. Most orchids don't bloom that often. In between blooms treat them as nice houseplants.