Orchid 101

I love orchids. They are so pretty! One catch… they can be pretty difficult to keep alive. I would know, because I pretty much killed mine and have since been bringing it back to life

Somewhere around March or April of 2014, Scott bought me an orchid! I wish I had a picture, but I guess I forgot to take one… I think I had it at my parents house while we went to New York for the summer, and it pretty much died. At one point it had WAY too much sunlight. (I used to think sun was good, but it’s bad. However, sunlight is good.)

After coming back, I have been determined to nurse it back to life! And reviving it has been quite a process. Orchids are such picky plants. Direct sunlight and the leaves will burn. Too much water and they will rot. Dry air is bad. Not enough airflow is bad. Normal soil is bad… I have my orchid on my windowsill in the kitchen right now and it seems to be doing quite well. You can see in the pictures below!

My first task with this plant was repotting. There were these teeny tiny little bugs in the bark and bugs are never good… So repotting was a must! I used this website for some assistance. The first step is to determine if it needs to be repotted. Bugs should also be on the list because bugs eat roots, which is bad! I also didn’t soak my orchid potting mix overnight…just for a couple hours maybe…and I did strain it because you just want mainly the bigger pieces of park and straining/rinsing will help with getting rid of any possible bugs hanging out in the potting mixture!

I think I did fairly okay with my repotting since the orchid is growing a new root!!

(New roots come from between the leaves and will grow down. Flower spikes come from the leave and grow up. Also, flower spikes are usually green, not purple like my new root. More about that here or here)

My orchid had some pretty nice leaves, and one stunted leaf. Maybe I’ll get lucky and there will be a new flower spike in the near future!

Anywho, check out my orchid progression photos. I included the dates of the pictures as well. 🙂 

Orchid as of 10/09/2014

Orchid as of 10/22/2014

Orchid as of 2/03/2015

Orchid as of 2/11/2015

Repotting

Those roots look so sad! 

Pretty new pot! 

Orchid as of 2/12/2015

New growth! 

Orchid as of 2/21/2015

Do you see that beautiful new root growth?!

Orchid as of 2/21/15

It is just looking so beautiful! I’m excited to see how this thing looks in a few months from now. Stay tuned since I’ll probably update again eventually.

Cheers!