The world is awash with books, websites, and videos on how to grow orchids. Most of these sources have some useful information, but some do not, and a few have positively misleading information. Of course, you can rely on the info we offer here at Orchid Insanity; we don’t claim to know everything, but experience, successes, and failures, have taught us things that will be helpful to many growers.
While you can certainly learn a lot from us and other experienced growers, the best teachers of orchid growing are the orchids themselves.
What you learn from careful observation of your own plants in your own growing conditions matters more than what books or videos or the know-it-all at the orchid society (or online forum) tells you. Your goal is to develop a reference baseline for what works for you, and what doesn’t. Once you have a reference baseline (which is just a fancy way of saying “experience with what works”), you’ll be better equipped to figure out how to grow a new kind of orchid that has joined your collection, or how to solve some culture issue you’re facing.
One reason many new growers struggle with orchids is they have the wrong expectation. They might get a few nice plants to begin with, but they really don’t know what to expect, and when the plants don’t meet their expectations, a new grower might start panicking, which usually results in overwatering, or over fertilizing, or switching to the latest growing media/nutrient fad, which further stresses the plant, causing the grower to eventually give up, claiming that growing orchids is just too hard. The reality is the new grower didn’t have a good baseline of experience and hence had the wrong expectations, and made the wrong decisions as a result.
The best and fastest way to develop baseline experience is to grow a lot of different types of orchids, preferably cheap ones to start with. You might try a few Cattleyas, a few Dendrobiums, a few Paphiopedilums, some Odont/Oncidiums, and maybe a few off the beaten path. A good number to start with is between 10 – 20 plants. You can get some cheap from an orchid society raffle table, or someone who is downsizing their collection. (We often have “cosmetically challenged” plants with minor leaf damage or irregularities that we can offer for a discount.) Do your research, but try not to fine-tune things too early. Keep conditions general — moderate light, watering to keep the medium in the pot moist, infrequent fertilization — and above all, give them high humidity conditions. High humidity is really the secret. If you’re growing indoors, the best setup for high humidity would be a humidity shelf, which is simply a plastic storage shelving unit wrapped in plastic sheeting (saran wrap is just fine!).
If some plants struggle, while others thrive, don’t stress out. This is natural, and common, and is a necessary step to becoming a good grower. Your plant’s successes and failures at growing speak volumes, once you know how to “listen” to what they’re saying. Once you learn how to listen, they’ll teach you to be better orchid growers.
