With over 25,000 species to date, many more expected and easily this many hybrids which are now becoming available as casual house plants, it is difficult to generalize about orchid culture. An excellent introduction to culture by Tony Capon of the Kingston Orchid Society appears here with his kind permission and is an excellent guide for those beginning to develop the hobby of growing orchids. It is assumed that more advanced growers should review these notes as a check on their culture practices and that they will pursue their interest in particular species and hybrids with a search engine such as Google or the links provided in the links section on our home page.

Growers who are interested in growing orchids from seeds should consider joining the Flasking Group which meets the third Thursday of every month at 7:30 in the Alexander Parker Orchid Laboratory in the headquarters building of the Royal Botanical Gardens. Orchid plants are now more generally available in local garden centers, but the best selection, especially of species, will be found at the local orchid shows (see our calendar) or at our regular meetings.

We acknowledge with thanks the permission of the Kingston Orchid Society and especially Tony Capon for contributing the following introduction to orchid growing.

aecapon@cogeco.ca

I think I was first asked to write this series of articles because I can write as a beginner to other beginners. I bought my first orchid around 1992 at a meeting of the Kingston Orchid Society. (Of course, it was a phalaenopsis!) At that time I knew nothing whatever about growing orchids, in fact nothing about any indoor plants except the occasional African violet! I now have about 30 orchids, which is the most I can comfortably handle. So what I would like to do is share with you my journey of learning and experience. On this first Beginners Page I thought I would just deal with some general principles I’ve learned along the way. Then in following articles we will look at some of the specifics of orchid growing one by one.

This is probably the biggest single lesson I’ve learned about orchid growing. Well, obviously, I don’t mean you can treat your orchids absolutely any way you like and still expect them to thrive and bloom. There are still some basic right ways and wrong ways of doing things, as with any other job or hobby. But you can’t just work by some established checklist and imagine you are going to succeed every time. We have some very experienced growers in our Orchid Society, but if you ask a question of one of them and five minutes later put the same question to another you will probably get two different answers! Oh, don’t misunderstand me. Asking questions of more experienced growers is one of the very best ways to learn. But don’t assume that the answers you get are the last word on any subject.

The same is true even of authoritative books on orchids. They very often contradict each other! This can be very frustrating till you get used to it. But you will never find a book that packages neatly all you ever need to know. This is because every orchid plant is different, every growing situation is different, every grower’s style is different. (One thing that follows from this is that nothing you read on these pages should be taken as the final word on anything!) What often pass for rules are simply guidelines or suggestions. File them away in your mind with the information that’s already there, add them to lessons learned by trial and error, and sooner or later a pattern will emerge and you’ll begin to build up a picture. And that will be your personal style. That’s what I’ve done anyway.