Creating the Proper Environment for Your Orchid

Series Summary

Orchids have some of the most exotic and beautiful flowers in the plant world. They boast of at least 25,000 officially recognized individual species, and some botanists count the number even higher. With such a natural diversity and beauty, orchids have garnered much attention from the world horticultural community. Amateur gardeners and flower enthusiasts are constantly cross pollinating species, and have to date created over 100,000 hybrid orchids. Orchid cultivation happens on a global scale, with favorable climate conditions regulating regions of high or low growth.

Aside from the aesthetic qualities that orchids are famous for, they provide at least one well known nutritional benefit. The vanilla bean is the fruit of an orchid plant, and is considered to be an important, valuable crop in many areas.

Whether you’re new to horticulture, or a budding enthusiast, proper orchid care and maintenance is important for having a healthy, happy plant. In this free online guide to caring for your new orchid, learn how to repot the plant you bought, a delicate operation that can kill any plant if not done carefully. Get tips for judging the dirt mix, trimming the orchid roots, using fertilizer, pest control, and watering your new orchid.

Video Transcript

" Hi! This is Gail on behalf of expertvillage.com and in this clip I will be showing you how to pot an orchid. There are many types of orchids and one of the first things to consider when buying an orchid is do you have conditions and the environment to suit that plant. Do you have a green house, do you grow in windows, and do you have sun or a lot of shade. Personally I buy what I like and I make the conditions to suit that plant. That can be a lot of extra work but I am happy with the results and in this instance, I am going to be repotting a dendrobium orchid, it’s an antelope type, and the reason they call it that is it does have little twists in the petals that resemble the horns of an antelope. This is a very popular orchid. You will see a lot of these along with the melanopsis orchid at Home Depot, Lowe’s, your supermarket and they do very well in the home environment."