growing orchids | Brooklyn Orchids

How-To, Orchid Beginner Tips, Orchid Care

Orchid Care: How To Fertilize Orchids

April 4, 2018 1 Comment

My Phalaenopsis orchids — A few of my orchids in bloom

I recently updated my post on how to water orchids, and because fertilizing orchids goes hand in hand with watering, I thought it would be a good time to revisit this topic as well.

Like all living things, orchids need nutrition in order to thrive. Feeding orchids is an important part of caring for them and eventually getting them to rebloom. This post will focus specifically on fertilizing Phalaenopsis (moth) orchids because Phals are the most common orchids for beginners, available everywhere from your local florist to Ikea and Trader Joe’s.

My Orchid Garden

My New Orchid Setup in DC

April 13, 2017 1 Comment

Now that we’ve settled into our apartment in DC, I thought I would share my new orchid growing setup here. We’re rending a condo on the top floor of a 4-ish story building (the bottom floor is an English basement). Our apartment gets mostly northern exposure, which is not great for orchids, but one room has a brighter, eastern-facing window…and we have a loft and several skylights!

Phal that I treated myself to from our new neighborhood Whole Foods that opened up a couple weeks after our move.

How-To, Orchid Beginner Tips, Orchid Care

How to Cut a Phalaenopsis Orchid Spike

April 6, 2012 60 Comments

So you have a beautiful Phalaenopsis orchid, but its blooms are starting to wilt and fall off. What do you do now?! First of all, don’t freak out and throw your plant in the garbage; fading flowers are totally normal and they do NOT mean that your orchid is dying! Orchids can live for years and years and years with the proper care. Part of this proper care is knowing when and where to cut the flower spike. This is one of the most common questions I get in the comments section of my blog posts, so I thought it would be helpful to write about how to proceed once your Phal (the most widely available type of orchid) has finished blooming.

My Orchid Garden

Blog Neglect and Orchid Collection Update

July 12, 2011 1 Comment

Dear Orchid Blog,

I’m aware that I’ve totally neglected you as of late. I promise to be a better blog caretaker.

Sincerely,

Me.

With that out of the way, I’d like to give a quick update on some of the growth that is going on in my orchid collection, starting with my NOID Oncidium that is going to bloom soon!

My Orchid Garden

So Much Orchid Growth!

May 31, 2011 8 Comments

I have a bunch of good news about my orchids and one bit of bad news, so I’ll start with the bad news first: I lost my Paphiopedilum Wizard of Oz ‘Hausermann’s Toto’ AM/AOS x [Paph. Candy Apple x Paph. Pulsar]. It had been doing very poorly for quite some time, and just didn’t seem to want to recover, so two weeks ago I sent it to the great orchid farm in the sky. 🙁 Orchid kill count: eight (I think??).

In much happier news, I have a lot of good growth going with a bunch of my orchids! Let’s take a look:

My Dendrobium aggregatum has 2 new sprouts

My Orchid Garden

Blooms and Spikes and Leaves—Oh My!

November 5, 2010 4 Comments

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted any updates on my orchid collection because there hasn’t been a whole lot going on other than the blooming of the mystery dendrobium, which, by the way, now has two blooms. Each has taken on a more pinkish and greenish tinge in the throat than when they first opened. The faint coloring is a little hard to capture in a photo, but you get the idea:

Mystery dendrobium blooms — Beautiful mystery blooms!