I love orchids but always thought I had a black thumb so I never had the nerve to buy one, afraid I’d just kill it. As it turned out my alleged black thumb was just me neglecting to water my plants enough.
Since absorbing and putting into practice the important fact that a lot of indoor plants need to be watered more than 3 times a year I have been able to keep alive quite a few varieties of plants and felt perhaps the curse of the black thumb had been lifted.
Then before I went out of town for over a week, I found an orchid plant set out on the curb. It had lost all it’s flowers but it’s leaves were still such a nice glossy green that it seemed it could be rescued.
Knowing absolutely nothing about orchids I placed the plant near a source of sunlight that got rather intense in the morning and left for my trip.
Turns out this was a big mistake.
By luck and pure chance while on my vacation I met up with an old friend who had several orchids thriving in her house. I told her about my found orchid and gathered a few health and care tips.
When I got home the orchid was in a very bad way. The leaves had completely died. Then they fell off. By placing the struggling plant in too much sun and telling no one to water it while I was away I may have simply sealed it’s fate. I then repotted and placed the plant away from direct sun and a few days later noticed what I learned was called a spike-a new growth. I felt optimistic because how bad can it be if the plant is still growing? Well, the spike opened and then opened a little more but now seems to have stopped.
I’d seen my friend’s orchid’s healthy Velamen covered roots: thick and spongy with a pale silvery color.
The sponginess draws water into the plant – when I repotted I saw my orchid’s Velamen was black and looked rotted. The Velamen was coming away from the roots and the roots themselves were just plain pathetic-looking hard strings. Somewhere along the way the water absorption system had failed.
My friend told me that once a week she would submerge her orchids in water for one hour and when I got home I’d done the same. And maybe that caused the spike…
But today I noticed an unfortunate looking discoloration of the main stalk near the base of the plant which is probably a fungus.
I didn’t didn’t know anything about potting materials;moss and bark and volcanic rock and etc. I didn’t know that under all the moss was just mostly dead roots. I didn’t know that these plants had to be watered as much as 2x a day and that I wasn’t doing enough to heal this plant. What I was doing was soaking a plant that didn’t have enough water drainage because the roots were so impacted in the moss– soaking was only further rotting the roots.
My friend’s roots were visible above the potting material. Mine were completely covered. Orchids have aerial roots. This means they grow above ground. Hoping to help I uncovered a few roots and tried to coax them to hang over the edge of the pot. I believe I was on the right track by doing this but since the covering of the roots was mostly dead it didn’t do that much good.
Today I finally did a search on orchid rescue. I found many links to pretty orchid pictures but not a case study on how to rescue an orchid from near death. Then I happened upon this article from Napa Valley Orchid Society. Called A Failed Phalaenopsis, Phalaenopsis being (most likely) the kind of orchid I am currently killing. I had been afraid to interfere too much with my sick plant’s potting material for fear of damaging the roots. After reading this article it seemed I had to do so right away. I freed the dead roots from the clump of moss and found a couple of not dried out but still very sick looking roots.I snipped off all the dead roots and then returned the plant to the pot. Instead of moss the plant is now resting on some rocks that I cleaned with dish washing liquid. The article mentioned resting the rescued plant on a humidity tray so it is possible my set up just isn’t good enough.
I fear my orchid that I meant to rescue may have fared better on the curb.
I’ve not given up all hope but I may have to purchase a healthy orchid and start over from scratch.