How to Grow Orchids

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen, and in this segment, we're going to talk about how to grow orchids. Now, orchids are such a beautiful household plant if you live in a cold climate, or you can grow them outside if you live in a warm climate. But before I even think about growing them, I like to consider their natural conditions. Now, orchids generally grow either in trees out of bark or they grow terrestrially, which is on the ground in bark as well. So when you're growing them inside, the best material that you can use is moss and bark or sticks or any real organic material where they have really good drainage and lots of wood-based material. And so when you're growing orchids, you can grow them in many different ways. There's so many different types of orchids. The easiest way, I've found, to grow them is right into bark or pieces of wood. These are just pieces of wood. When we cut down a tree, we had it shredded. And so we're just using that shredded wood underneath. And they make roots, and the roots need air. So if those roots don't get air, they will die. So they need really good drainage, really good earthy. Moss works great. People have used Styrofoam and different types of material that's all air. Because they do grow out of trees and nature, so they don't really need a lot of material. So to get them to bloom, orchids need different factors. They need a dormant time -- a time when they're not really growing -- and they need an area time when there's less light than others. They grow in the jungle, so basically, I've found they don't like bright, full, hot sun. They get sunburned really easily. So it's almost better to grow them under artificial light or in part sun, part shade -- better than that hot afternoon sun because sometimes they will get sunburned. You can start them pretty much any time of the year, and a lot of times, they're like a Christmas cactus, too. I've just set my orchids in the greenhouse or I put them in the garage for a month or two, and then put them back out in the house, and it just seems like that change, many times, will just force them to bloom again. But you never want to get them below even 50 degrees on a lot of the warm climate orchids because they will get damaged. But orchids are so easy to grow, and I found, just by putting them in an east or a south-facing window and just leaving them alone, okay? Keeping them wet, but never letting them get too wet where they're sitting in water or too dry, and they will just do their thing and they'll set off blooms for me every winter and I can really enjoy them."