Garden Orchids

No matter how new you may be in the greenhouse-for-profit business, you need not fear failure with orchids.

They are not all costly or difficult, as you may have supposed. Orchids offer double profit—as flowering pot plants and as cut flowers.

There are terrestrial (earth-grown) types such as the cypripe-diums (lady slippers) and calanthes. These are popular collector plants, easily handled by the amateur grower. The bulk of the showy orchids, such as cattleya and its many hybrid forms, vandas with sprays of frilly flowers, and the small-flowered dendrobium are epiphytes—air plants. Cattleyas and vandas make marvelous flowers for corsages, and many house plant growers raise cattleyas at their windows or under lights. The smaller-flowered dendrobium is often purchased by new growers who find this easy to grow. There are orchids for the cool, intermediate, and warm house. Choose the type best suited to your growing conditions, your budget, and your market.

To illustrate how really hardy some orchids are, here is the story of one of mine. One year I received a shipment of orchids from Central America in very hot weather. The bare-root shipping, plus the quarantine period, had not helped. I laid them on damp sphagnum, and before long most of them showed new growth. Some waited 3 to 4 months to send out new shoots.

One was held over till spring—nearly 9 months after arrival. It looked so shrivelled that I tossed it into the trash can where I discard dead plant material. Some 2 weeks later I emptied the can—and found the "dead" orchid showing promising bits of green! I planted it, and it grew and produced nice small green flowers.

If you decide to grow orchids for profit, you need not pay fabulous prices for them, neither is it well to go overboard for alleged bargains. Purchase from a recognized orchid specialist. You can buy mature plants or seedlings of almost any size, and later you may want to try your own hybridizing. This is a task. It takes orchids 3 to 7 years to flower from seed.
If you do not want a strictly orchid house, you can still make profits from orchids. You can buy cut orchids wholesale and fashion them into corsages; they are ideal sales items for holidays as well as for proms, graduations, and other occasions. The orchids will cost you less than half the proceeds of the finished corsage.

Some firms offer correspondence courses of instruction on orchid growing and design of corsages, and there are also orchid societies in many cities. The American Orchid Society publishes a fine monthly bulletin and an annual yearbook. Address: Dr. George W. Dillon, Secretary, Botanical Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts.

Potting and General Culture
All orchids need firm potting with plenty of drainage. Potting substances vary. Terrestrials like the cypripidiums, the nun orchid, and the calanthes, grow well in soil mixtures of peatmoss, sphagnum moss, loam, and osmunda fiber (a type of fern root), or shredded bark. There are hundreds of other terrestrials, but many of them, with grassy foliage and tiny flowers, are of interest only to the dedicated collector
When you pot in bark or osmunda fiber, soak it overnight first. Specialists vary in potting methods, but here is what I do.

Epiphytes are grown in osmunda fiber, shredded fir, or redwood bark. Shredded bark is easiest to use; plants can be potted in it with less difficulty.

The orchids I grow are not potted until they have a root system. They come in bare root from the tropical Americas. Then I place them on moist sphagnum moss while roots form, a matter of weeks, even months. As soon as roots form, I select a regular clay pot of a size to accommodate them without crowding. With a small chisel, I knock a larger drainage hole in the bottom of the pot and crock it well with pot chips. (You may prefer to use the special multiple-drainage-hole orchid pots.) Then, holding the plant in the pot, I stuff in the moistened medium and tamp it well all around the roots. You can pot twenty mature orchids in osmunda and you'll have done a good and rather arm-tiring day's work! After the orchid is in the pot—centered as nearly as possible—I place additional fiber or bark over the roots and press it firmly with my thumbs to weld plant and potting into one.

During the growing season, orchids can stand a thorough watering about once a week; at other times, they need it only once in about 10 days.

When plants are in active growth, I fertilize with fish emulsion or a special orchid fertilizer such as Wilson's.

Propagate orchids through seeds, divisions, and offsets. In dividing large ones like cattleyas, plant at least four of the back bulbs (those which have finished flowering) to a pot.
To pollinate, determine where the stigma is and coat it with pollen. Orchids, perhaps more than any other genus, are adapted to intergeneric hybridizing. Do not remove the seed pod until it splits. Time varies with different species and even among similar varieties, with some requiring 3 months to ripen, others taking as long as 9 months.
The fine seeds are germinated in sterilized glass flasks of various nutrient solutions. If you intend to take up this phase of orchid culture, consult a book devoted entirely to orchids or Dr. Post's Florist Crop Production and Marketing.