Gardening is one of those hobbies where people love to share what they have learned. Friends of ours recently bought an orchid at a local gardening fair.
As you know, I love orchids but our association with them is very much a hit and miss affair. Neither Mick nor I really know all that much about growing them. We just know we like them.
Friends told us that the orchid experts claim that if you cut the spike of flowers off while they are still flowering and put them in a vase that the flower blooms will be better on the orchid plant the next year.
I’ve always just brought my orchids in while flowering, pot and all, but after hearing this, I took the brave step of cutting my wine colored orchids and the lighter pink one and putting the flower spikes in a vase.
Apparently the idea is to cut the spikes at an angle and then every week to change the water and cut another small portion of the stem of the spike.
Being prepared to try anything that makes our orchids bloom longer I was happy enough to give it a try, although I must admit it was hard cutting the bloom off while it was still flowering. However the experts claim it will still flower for months if you follow the two simple directions, so I guess we’ll see.
In a plain blue glass vase the two different colored orchids look quite spectacular on the dining room table and certainly add color and grace to the room.
The other interesting thing we discovered is not to be in too much of a hurry to divide orchids after they finish flowering, but to let them grow up as bigger orchids will flower better and produce more spikes. So that’s two things we learned about growing orchids today that will help us have bigger and better blooms.
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