Once again I have to say that if I tried to do everything that the orchid books tell me to do with regard to fertilizing my orchids, my head would be spinning and my wallet about empty! I will give you the same advice as I did about watering - set yourself a simple routine which you use for all your orchids, then vary this for particular plants as you have the time and inclination. Have fun experimenting! Try different fertilizers and timetables and see what works best for you. Remember one important fact: orchid potting medium contains few or no nutrients, and nutrients contained in

It is accepted wisdom that orchids flourish best in air conditions of above-average humidity. This makes sense when one considers that most of the orchids we grow came originally from wet tropical areas. But how can we provide high humidity in the dry air conditions which prevail in most of our homes, at least during the winter months? (By the way, it’s worth investing in a cheap hygrometer, which measures air humidity, obtainable from Canadian Tire and other hardware stores.) Some people recommend placing the orchid pots on trays of pebbles filled with water up to the base of the pots, combined with daily misting with water from a spray bottle. If that works for you, far be it from me to discourage you, although I do feel a little doubtful that this will result in a sort of humid bubble in a dry room, especially if the air is moving as it should be. Furthermore, it sounds like hard work, which I dislike. Another disadvantage is that I can’t help thinking it will make tall orchids awfully tippy!

Wouldn’t it be nice if the whole of nature loved us and nothing nasty ever happened? But, unfortunately, in orchid growing as in everything else in life, the nasties are going to be busy and we have to learn to cope with them. There’s an abundance of information and advice out there. Your orchid society library has any number of books on orchid culture, and every one of them will have a section on Pests and Diseases. Read them - and grieve. I can only tell you of my experience as a beginner, and give a few bits of home-spun advice. First let me say that by quite simple means pests and diseases can generally be brought under control. You will never win the war to the point where you can relax your vigilance, but you can show them who’s boss and make them quite unhappy. Rule number one is to check every plant regularly for problems. My wife Elizabeth is my pest control officer, and she checks every plant every week after it has been watered. It has to get past her eagle eye before it can be returned to its place. We fight two main ongoing battles: one against mealies and the other against scale. While we have reasonably good success in keeping clear of mealy bug, scale insect is a great deal more difficult to eliminate, and we nearly always find a few individuals in our routine checks. To fight these pests, have available a box of tissues, Q-tips, 70% isopropyl alcohol (not 90% which is too strong), and a small dish to pour it into (aluminum pie dishes are ideal and can be thrown away). In addition, we have developed two types of spray which you can make up yourself as described below. It is handy to have a way of marking plants that need ongoing attention. We use coloured cocktail sticks stuck into the growing medium – green for scale, red for mealy. Mealy-bugs are small white furry creatures that are experts at concealment. They lurk in cracks in plants. They breed and grow in wilting material around pseudobulbs and sheaths. A way to deal with them when a plant becomes infected is first to remove any that you can see with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol. Then spray the plant and potting medium thoroughly three times at weekly intervals. An orchid society member gave us the following recipe which we have found very effective. Soak 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper overnight in 2½ cups water. Filter this carefully through a paper towel or fine cheesecloth into a 1 litre spray bottle. If you do not filter thoroughly the residual cayenne will clog the bottle spray. Add to the bottle 1 tablespoon flea and tick shampoo (obtainable in pet stores) and 2 tablespoons insecticidal soap (obtainable in plant stores). Fill to 1 litre with 70% isopropyl alcohol, and shake thoroughly. Scale is a tiny insect with a hard shell. Mature scale are fairly obvious as circular pale brown slightly domed spots, but young scale are almost invisible as tiny creamy streaks, often in the furrows of pseudobulbs. One of the earliest symptoms is a sticky patch on a leaf. Scale can move around like crazy. They love the underside of leaves, they climb spikes and they fasten themselves on flowers. A way to deal with scale is to wipe the leaves of susceptible plants regularly with tissue soaked in alcohol. Use a Q-tip dipped in alcohol to dislodge visible scale and to probe into crevices, particularly the fine furrows in pseudobulbs. If you observe a significant infestation on a plant, spray at weekly intervals for three weeks, including all surfaces and the surface of the growing medium. Here is a recipe which also came from one of our members. Almost fill a 1 litre spray bottle with half water and half 70% isopropyl alcohol. Add ½ teaspoon insecticidal plant soap, and shake thoroughly.

Well, just relax, because this time the news is all good! (We need a break after all that stuff about nasties.) Unless you want to grow really exotic plants, you shouldn’t have a problem with temperature. But I can give you one or two bits of general advice. An important thing to keep in mind is that, in order to flower, most orchids need the greatest possible variation between day and night temperatures. This is hard to give in summer, which may be one reason why most orchids prefer to flower between fall and spring. The sun-porch where I grow all my orchids has its own heater and thermostat, and in winter I set it at 14°C at night. In the daytime, even in winter on bright days, the temperature normally goes up to 23/24°C of its own accord. If you can get a day/night spread of, say, 8 to 10°C you will be doing well; otherwise, do the best you can. Some orchids, especially

Phalaenopsis, cannot tolerate temperatures below 14/15°C without severe damage, so be careful, and don’t put them outside, even in high summer. Others, such as Cattleya, Paphiopedilum or Cymbidium, can quite happily go down to around 10/12°C or even lower. So, if you have more than one growing location and can vary the temperatures, go for it. There are some gorgeous orchids which need cooler temperatures than I can provide. The best known of these is Masdevallia. If you think you can provide the necessary coolness, consult the manuals or society members who grow them, and good luck. The results will be worth the trouble.

Most orchid-growing medium is basically bark in some form or other, sometimes with fibre and/or coarse perlite added. The purpose of the potting medium is not what you might think. It is not to provide nourishment for the plant. I guess there are two purposes. The first is to provide physical stability for the plant. The second purpose (and this is the unexpected one) is to let air get to the roots. Most orchid roots are in fact air roots, covered with a spongy material called velamen which absorbs moisture from the air. The air in the pot is kept moist by the moisture in the medium. So the biggest mistake you can make is to use a medium which is too fine and becomes saturated. The roots are deprived of air and smothered. R.I.P. Better to use a medium that is too coarse than too fine. Many orchid growers swear by some particular kind of exotic growing medium. But I myself find it doesn’t make much difference, so long as the medium is coarse enough. You can buy it at orchid shows or at most plant stores. Every book you read and every talk you hear tells you that you must soak the medium overnight before using it. If you’re a conformist, that’s what you will do. If you’re a bit of a rebel like me, you will use dry medium, give a thorough watering immediately after re-potting, a good dowsing halfway through the first week, and then treat the plant in the normal way along with all the others. First off, I could never plan to re-pot an orchid 24 hours in advance anyway, and second off, it’s much easier to bump down the medium round the roots if it’s dry. If a plant looks seriously unhappy, or if it is just not growing as it should, the first remedy to try is re-potting. But under normal conditions you shouldn’t need to re-pot an orchid more often than every two years. The best time to do it is after flowering and before new roots or shoots have started to grow. Here’s an outline of what to do. Get the plant out of its pot, causing as little damage to the roots as possible. Work all the old medium off the roots with your fingers and discard it. Break off any old pseudobulbs that have obviously reached the end of their working lives. Sympodial (multi-stemmed) orchids may often be divided at this point. It’s usually unwise to divide Cattleya or Paphiopedilum into more than two parts. Some others, such as Oncidium and Encyclia, may be divided into several smaller pieces, but make sure that each piece has good leaves and plenty of healthy roots. If possible, I prefer to carefully break divisions apart rather than cut them, as the break will occur at a more natural point. Dust the divisions with cinnamon to discourage infection. Trim the roots by snipping off parts that look dead or just tired. Roots that have grown out of the pot can be eased downwards. Use a clean sterile pot, definitely no bigger than is needed to accommodate the trimmed roots. A layer of styrofoam pellets (peanuts) in the bottom of the pot will help with drainage. Place the plant in the pot at the right level. Monopodial (single-stemmed) orchids and orchids that put out new growth on all sides should be centred. Those that grow in one direction only should have the oldest part hard against the side of the pot so that new growth can be made towards the centre. Work in the medium all round, bumping the pot from time to time to work it down among the roots, till the pot is filled to within an inch or so of the top. If the plant seems wobbly, you can stabilize it with a piece of stiff wire stretched across the medium and anchored to the pot on both sides. This can be removed once the roots have taken hold. Water thoroughly. For the first week or two, keep the plant in fairly subdued light. It’s helpful to write the date of re-potting (e.g. 5/02) on the back of the label. Don’t forget to label carefully each division as it is potted.

Happy growing!

Tony Capon