Orchids awaken in us a great passion for collecting. At the latest when professional care no longer contains any hurdles, the desire to grow your own orchid grows. You have the choice of the less complicated vegetative method and the highly complicated generative propagation technique. Below we give an overview of how to grow orchids yourself.

Orchids are best grown from Kindeln

Suitable for beginners and promising - vegetative breeding techniques

In order for your orchid cultivation to take shape quickly in the early stages, the focus is on vegetative (asexual) propagation. The following 3 methods can be put into action on the windowsill. New orchids will thrive with the same wonderful attributes of the mother plant without having to deal with countless, demotivating setbacks. All 3 techniques are explained in more detail below:

child

  • Calanthe, Dendrobium, Epidendrum and Phalaenopsis are suitable
  • Leaves and aerial roots thrive on the bulbs or flower stalks where flowers should actually sprout
  • Cut these kindel off when they have at least 2-3 leaves and several aerial roots
  • Plant each offshoot in a transparent culture pot with fine-grained orchid soil
  • Keep slightly moist under a hood or in a greenhouse at 25 degrees and fertilize with liquid every 4-6 weeks

cuttings

  • Climbing orchid species such as Vanda or Angraecum are suitable
  • Take a 40 cm long, non-flowering head cutting
  • Defoliate a cutting in the lower half
  • Put in a pot with orchid substrate (€8.00) with a small grain size
  • Put a plastic bag over it, supported by 2-3 wooden sticks as spacers
  • Spray regularly at 25-28 degrees Celsius and water sparingly

division

  • Many branching (sympodial) orchid species such as Brassia, Cymbidium or Oncidium are suitable
  • Unpot the orchid and shake off the soil
  • Divide the root ball so that each segment has at least 3 bulbs
  • Plant each section in a pot with orchid substrate

Grow new orchids yourself from seeds - a brief overview

In order to start an orchid cultivation based on sowing seeds, you should have many years of experience in vegetative propagation. Orchid seeds do not have the natural nutritive tissue that other plant seeds have. In order for the seeds to germinate and the seedlings to be viable, they are given an artificial supply under sterile conditions that replaces the natural symbiosis fungus. The individual steps are briefly summarized below:

  • Perform manual pollination among 2 related orchid flowers once the flowers have opened
  • Remove the seeds from the mature seed pods and sterilize them in hydrogen peroxide
  • Prepare a special culture medium under sterile conditions and fill it in a test tube

Apply the sterilized seeds to the culture medium with an inoculation loop and close the test tube. It is important to note that you pay meticulous attention to absolute cleanliness and repeatedly clean the tool with ethanol. Place the breeding vessels in a bright, warm location with a constant 25 degrees Celsius. If germination begins after a few weeks, this is the beginning of a 5 to 15 year waiting period before the first flowering.

tips

You avoid the high effort of sowing by scattering the seeds on the root disc of a mother plant. With a little luck, the symbiosis fungus is present in the substrate and causes the seed to germinate.

Category:

Indoor plants