Orchid Seminar - November 14, 2020

I'm Paul Price. I'm with the Vero Beach Orchid Society. I moved here in 2006, been growing orchids since 1995. I bought my first orchid in Orlando from Tom Ritter. I still have that orchid. This year it didn't bloom. It didn't bloom because of thrips, which if you're sitting here getting bitten, it's not mosquitoes, it's thrips.

So, with that being said, welcome to Busy Bee. I'm going to do an orchid class for you guys. Today I normally do a little bit more about repotting and taking care of your orchids. Today I want to touch a little bit more on the chemical aspect as far as the insects because right now the insects are off the hook because we're not having a cold winter that knocks them back. So we're having a really warm winter and my orchid house right now I'm fighting thrips like you just wouldn't believe. It's unreal right now.

How many of you have been to the Vero Beach Orchid Society that meets here in Vero at the Garden Club? A few of you. Okay, the Vero Beach Orchid Society meets every Thursday of the month pending right now at the Garden Club over by the County Administration Building off of 27th Avenue. If you'd like to come, you know, sit in on a meeting, you're more than welcome. We love having extra guests. We will be here next weekend for the customer appreciation weekend. Remember that Dan and Tina are doing that for you guys, not for them. So please come out and visit them next weekend, spend a little money with them.

Now with that being said, with all the orchid shows being canceled throughout the state, remember your orchid growers, remember your plant people, buy from them if you have to buy online, buy from them, help them. Because I can tell you right now they're going to be hurting. A lot of people are going to be hurting, but we'll deal with it and go on with life. What I want to talk to you guys about is repotting and how to take care of your orchids today. How many of you, let's do a count. How many of you have, say, 10 orchids and under? Raise your hands. Okay, drop your hands when I start hitting the numbers. 20 orchids and under. 50 orchids and under. 100 orchids and under. 100? You have more than 100. 100 or under? Okay. Anybody have any more than 100? It's not a hobby. Come on, it's an addiction. There's only one cure and it's that one more orchid. So that's why, you know, when you get an orchid, it doesn't bloom all the time. So you tend to go out and get another one so it's blooming and you end up with a collection like mine, which is now probably 600 strong. Everything needs to be repotted this year. I'm hoping for a two-week vacation. Looks like we're getting it.

So I brought a couple of things here this morning from my place, just as small examples of different types of orchids because I like to show off different things and try and get you guys. Once you get into the hobby, you usually start with phthalonopsis like this. I want to try and encourage you to try other types of orchids as well and get into the hobby. Probably my favorite orchid in the world is probably this little guy and it's René Marquis and the name of the flower is Flamethrower. It's a really nice epidendrum type orchid. It grows really well for me. I just, I like it. It's neat. It's a green flower with yellow and red in the throat on the lip. So it's just a really neat, unusual thing. So when you go to the shows or even better grow, the company at Lowe's and Home Depot sells in the bags. Occasionally you check those bags and you'll see one in a bag sometimes. It's been a while since they've shipped any out in those bags, but Tina and Dan also buy their orchids from better growth. So, you know, you get some stuff from them. When you go to the different shows, you know, you can find stuff like this and this is actually a friend of mine. It's named after his son and I've been wanting this one for quite a while and I finally got ahold of one. So, and it came into bloom. So it's really pretty little flower. As this type gets a little bit bigger and gets to be a specimen, you get a lot of flower spikes up with all the flowers at the top and they really make a statement. It's a really pretty orchid. How many of you know what a pencil cactus is? There are orchids that look like pencil cactus. That's these guys. This one is a species. This is out of Thailand and the species name is named after the gentleman, Mr. Anderson, that discovered it. It's called Andersonii. It's an unusual taurite form of a vanda. It used to be really difficult to find them, but the taurites have become very popular and very sought after right now. If you go to the shows, people are usually looking for them and they're looking for the different varieties.

Good morning. Have a seat. But people are starting to get really interested in these. They were really popular years ago. They kind of fell out of favor. They've come back into favor and everybody's really looking for these. They're neat plants. I usually grow them in a pot like this with a wire tube growing up through the center with lava rock in the bottom. They grow in full sun. I've got an area south of my greenhouse that's like a patio or rock gravel patio with pots of these spread out growing. I'm getting ready to expand that area this afternoon when I leave here. They're really popular, really easy to grow. They grow like a weed. Just something neat and different. Everybody says that orchids don't like to grow in full sun. That's not true. There are orchids that will grow in just about every type of climate that you can think of. Orchids, as far as everybody knows, it's probably the number one type of plant in the world that has more species or varieties in the world. They grow on every continent except Antarctica. You can find orchids wherever you go. In this area there are native orchids, especially in the oak trees. Those are the encyclia tempensis. That's these guys. These usually bloom in May. You're not going to see flower spikes on them until usually about the middle of May. If you look in the oak trees, you have to look for them. Usually you find them in the resurrection fern. That's typically where you're going to find them because when the seed lands, when that resurrection fern gets going, it tends to foster the seed and they grow a little bit better. If you're in a natural area, look up at the oak trees. You'll see them. I don't think I've seen any on this oak back here, which is kind of surprising, but I usually try and look up and see if I can spot them.

What I want to talk to you now about, since I've covered some of the stuff that I've brought in, is how to repot an orchid. How many of you repot your own orchids? Good. Usually it's not that many, so you're pretty brave. How many are just now getting into orchids? Everybody, pretty much. When you look at orchids, I'm going to give you a couple of tips. When you look at orchids, look at the shape of the leaf, look at the length, and look at the width of the petals. There's a difference on the orchids, and I'm going to arrange them pretty much according to sun exposure. Like I said, there are orchids that will grow in every kind of light. From heavy filtered light, which are your phthalonopsis, you're going to see the leaves are a little bit longer, and they're also wider. The reason for that is they're trying to collect more light. If it's an orchid that's growing in brighter light, it's going to have a thinner leaf, and it's going to tend to be a little bit longer. It may not be real long like these guys. They live up on the top of the canopy in the oak trees. They get a lot of bright indirect light, and sometimes they'll get full sunlight, full direct sunlight up in the oak trees. So watch the shape of your leaf. That'll tell you where it grows. Just like with this guy, he's out in full sun, so it's a short, thin leaf.

So when you look at your orchids, they're going to tell you if you know what you're looking for, how they grow, and where they grow. Now, there's another thing too with orchids. What's the number one killer of orchids? Well, besides us. Somebody said it over here. Who said it? Water. Too much water. If you look at orchids, you can tell how much water they're going to want also by the shape and structure of the plant. Orchids have... I don't have a Cadillia, so I can't... Well, I do, but I don't. Orchids have structures called pseudobulbs. What the pseudobulb stands for is like false... basically what it says, like a false bulb. Like an onion, like this guy. You can see the bulbs are a little bit fatter. The structure on the plant's thicker. The reason that they have that is they're used to getting rained on, but they're also used to being allowed to dry out hard before they get watered again. So you want to let them dry out completely before you water them again. You don't want to leave them wet constantly. It'll rot the roots off the plant. That's why water is your number one killer on orchids. Because, you know, who has a heavy hand watering? I do. Boy, do I ever.

Now, the difference between that is orchids like water. They like a lot of water when they get wet, but any orchid with a pseudobulb or a cane, let it dry out between watering. Orchids like vandals, like this guy, and like fails, they don't have a pseudobulb. So they require a little bit more water. Now, with fails, the way they accomplish that is they grow them in sphagnum moss. The sphagnum moss, when you wet it down, will stay wet for about a week. It won't stay sopping wet, but it'll stay kind of moist to the touch. And then it will dry out. This guy, these guys get watered every day. Just like my regular scrap leaf vandals, they get watered every day. And I usually turn the water on them for about 10 minutes, just to get the roots wet again and turn them green. That way I get new growth.

Now, we're just coming out of the winter dormancy period for orchids. Now is the time that you want to be repotting. The reason I'm telling you this is because repotting time is now. Once the orchids break dormancy and they start pushing new growth, that's the time that you want to start pulling them out of the pots, cleaning the roots off, trimming them up, and then repotting them into a new pot with fresh mix. So how many of you have seen Odom's Orchids where they grow in that gray rock? Anybody? Odom's Orchids grows in a rock product called Stalite. The reason he grows it in that is it doesn't decompose like Orchid Bark does, so he doesn't have to repot as often. Mr. Odom probably has, I would say, 100,000 plants easily, easily, and it takes a lot of work to repot all those every couple of years. So with using that gray rock, he doesn't have to repot as frequently. He can go five to six years before he has to repot an orchid, and usually when they repot is because it's overgrown the pot and it's time to divide it. And that's when they do their repotting. How many of you have seen the ground orchids, the Epidendrums? They're really neat.

We call these the poor man's orchids. Back when orchids were first discovered, these were the ones that were affordable. The big Catalaeus and Phelanopsis, you were paying $200 easily for a backbulb division off of a Catalaea, so they were kind of unattainable at that time. But these were readily available and they were moderately priced. Thanks to modern day science, we now can afford some of the prettier stuff. I'm going to spit a little bit, sorry. So I'll step back. Now that they've started to figure out how to cross them, breed them, and grow them out, they're affordable for us. Like I said, back in the early 1900s, when the DuPonts were collecting, they were easily $200 to $300 for a backbulb division, which was the back part of the plant. And the owner would keep the front part with the growing tip going. Nowadays, you just don't have to worry about that.

So typically, a typical orchid is going to run you about anywhere from $25 to, well, it depends. I mean, it depends on what it is or how old it is. So you can find stuff anywhere from $25 all the way up to a couple of thousand dollars easily. I've been at Odom's when Mr. Odom will pick up a plant and pull it out of his collection that's died. He'll walk over to the trash can and go, well, that was $8,000 clunk and throw it in the trash can. So it just depends on what you're looking for. You can find it. Who has never repotted an orchid? Come on up front. I like to show by example. There are different potting mixes that you can use. You can use, this is a basic orchid bark. This doesn't have anything else added to it. This is a phthalenopsis mix. It has some peat mixed in with perlite. So it's a little bit better for your fails out in the landscape. This, if you're doing catalayas, dendrobiums, things like that, it's probably a better bark to use than this because this is going to stay a little bit wetter, a little bit longer.

Now, if you're growing phthalenopsis indoors, how many of you have them inside? Just about everybody has fails inside. It's the number one potted plant that's being sold in the United States now. It used to be the point set up. Now it's the phthalenopsis. To repot these guys, and this is a really good example, if you've got a plant that's in flower on an orchid, typically you don't want to repot it. Now with phthalenopsis, this is the only plant on an orchid that you can repot and it won't drop the flowers immediately right after you repot it. It'll hold on to them. As long as you don't tear the root system up too bad, it will do a good job and keep going. Now, you're looking at this plant and I want to point something out. There's a difference between this plant and this plant. What is it? The leaves. Yup, it's the leaves. Look at the leaves. They're thin and they're starting to droop. That could be a combination of two things. It could be over watering where you've watered it too much and the roots have stayed in here wet and the roots have rotted out. Then it can't take up moisture. So what it does is it takes some moisture out of the leaf to keep the front part going.

Now, the other side of that is it could be that you're not watering it enough and it's self-sacrificing the moisture out of the back leaves to keep the front going. So the only way to tell that is by taking it out of the pot and looking at the root system. There is a little bale down there. Can you grab that for me? I'm going to put you to work. Bale of moss. Go ahead and open that up. Let it go. Let the pollen come out of there. And then just take it right at the top. Everybody knows what sphagnum moss is. When you're looking at sphagnum moss, look for a sphagnum moss that has long fiber or Chilean sphagnum moss. It's the better moss that you can buy. This is a long fiber so you know it's going to be a little bit better. Everybody knows how to use this. When you buy it like this, it's completely dried out and it is compressed into a bale. It's rock hard. It's dry. I mean, you're going to have a hard time repotting with this.

What you need to do with this is break off a piece like that and then take it and just put it into a bucket of water. Break it up. Put it in there and let it sit for a minute. What it's going to do is it's going to start absorbing that water and it's going to fluff up. You can't use that moss until you get it wet and fluff it up. Once you fluff it up and it's wet, then you wring it out and then you can use it. Now, where to go? I wanted to show this because it's an older plant that's been here in the nursery. They've got it tucked back in the hospital area. The old plastic pot is starting to decompose. That tells me it's been in that pot for a while. When the plastic pot starts to break up, it's time to repot. When I tell you to look at a plant, if you're wondering if you've over-watered it or if you're not watering it enough, open it up and look at the roots. The roots will tell you these roots are nice and green. They're healthy. They have meat on the bones. It tells me it's not being watered enough. A little bit more frequent watering will stop this from doing this.

I don't know how often DJ is watering his orchids. The easiest way to do it is just go through. When you're going to repot it, go ahead and pull the moss off of there. Just break it up. I'm going to let you hold the plant. You break it up. You pull all the old moss off of it. No, you can be pretty rough with it. Orchids, everybody says orchids are really delicate plants. They are not. That is an absolute lie. It's a myth. It's just the flowers. The plants themselves are rugged as all get-out. They're meant to go through stress periods. They're meant to be banged up. But you're not supposed to touch the flower, right? Well, you can touch the flower, but it's not going to kill it unless you sit there and grab it. Well, there's a sign in there that says don't touch the flowers because of the oil on your hand. No, you won't pull all of that moss out of there. Yeah, we're going to trim it up. We're going to clean it up.

Now, everybody's probably wondering what this is for. This is how I take care of unruly people in the class. Yeah, there's a little bit more moss in there to clean out. The thing with that sphagnum moss is that after six months to a year in Florida, it rots and decomposes. So sphagnum moss does need to be replaced or taken out and repotted every year. Sphagnum moss just does not hold up in Florida in the heat and humidity. Now, people up north can go a couple of seasons with sphagnum moss and it will stay in pretty good shape before they have to repot. Unfortunately for us, we have to repot every year with sphagnum moss. See how you did? You did pretty good. I mean, you can't get it all. It's pretty tough. The problem with sphagnum moss is old sphagmoss has a tendency to like to grow fern. Once fern gets in a pot, it competes with the plant for the fertilizer because the fern will take up all the fertilizer before the orchid gets a chance to get it.

So now, like I was saying with this orchid, when it's time to repot, you can put moss back in this, but how do you get all those roots back in the pot? Kind of difficult. What I typically like to do is clean up the roots and we're going to do that. When you look at the roots, what you're looking for are fat, white, fleshy roots with a green tip. That's typically what you're looking for in a healthy plant. If this plant is not in good shape, you're going to see this. And you're going to see when you repot a fail, you're going to see some of the roots are going to do this, some of them are not. Go ahead and pass that around. That's an indication of what the roots will do if you're not repotting on a regular basis with a fail. It rots and it decomposes and then it just doesn't do the plant any good.

Now, the torch, how many of you have clippers at home? How many of them use them on plant after plant after plant after plant? Don't do that. You can do alcohol, but they need to sit in there for 30 minutes before they're absolutely sterile. The alcohol or bleach needs to leave the clippers in them for a while before they will be sterilized. The plumber's torch is a flame. It sterilizes immediately. In an open flame like this, viruses and bacteria and fungus will not stay alive on a torch or a pair of clippers once you've torched them. I'm going to warn you if you do this, just don't handle them with somebody like this. Be careful because I've seen people brand themselves.

What you usually want to do is sterilize them if you cannot do that. Some people will use single-edge razor blades. Now, I'm going to warn you with the single-edge razor blades. If you're not comfortable with doing that, do this. You can get a little creme brulee torch that's not a plumber's torch if you don't feel comfortable with that. But even with a creme brulee torch, just be careful you don't brand yourself either. You can do it with that just as well as you can do it with a plumber's torch. With the single-edge razor blade, once you use that blade on a plant, throw it away. Don't use it on another plant. The problem with that is if you've got a plant that has a disease and you cut or you trim on that plant, and then you go to do the next plant, you've just given that disease or that virus to the next plant. You want to try and keep your cutter sterile. The issue with some of the old Cadillac growers and orchid growers is they didn't know about this back in the 50s and 60s. And you will find some older growers that do have virus in some of their plants. Typically, most people will tell you that when you've got a plant that has virus, just throw it away because eventually the orchid will succumb to it.

Now, what I'm going to get you to do on some flowers, like on Cadillac flowers, you will see a color break where there will be darker blotching in the petals versus the normal coloration. That's one virus. There are, I believe, 14 different viruses that affect orchids. How many of you smoke? Anybody smokes? Wow. Not anymore. If you smoke cigarettes, tobacco smoke, tobacco will cause a virus with your orchids. How many of you grow tomatoes? Do not grow your tomato plants near your orchids. There's a tomato virus that also attacks orchids. So all it takes is thrips going back and forth, feeding off your tomato plants, going to your orchid plants.

Boom. How many of you have gardenias? Yeah, I figured there'd be a few of you. How many of you have hibiscus? Those are the two main host plants for thrips. How many of you have oak trees? That's the number one host plant for thrips. Oak trees, they're the number one host for thrips. So everybody has thrips. It's an insect that's like a little tiny grain of rice. It's teeny, teeny tiny. I mean, it looks like somebody took a pencil and did a little, you know, one-millimeter line. Is that what you call no-see-ums? Yep, that's what no-see-ums are. So if they're out here biting you, they're biting plants.

What I want you to do is go through any root that has, you know, no meat on the bone or is flat like that. Just trim it off. It's thrips. So they got me this morning right away. Thrips, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about thrips because they seem to be the number one problem. Thrips are, it's a tiny insect that has a mouth structure that is a piercing, sucking type of apparatus. What they do is they have an apparatus that goes across the leaf and they'll scrape the leaf, and then they'll come back and drink the juices where they've damaged the leaf. They'll do it to flower buds every time, especially on vanda. How many grow vandas? It's a number one problem for vandas are thrips.

There are a couple ways that you can treat thrips. There are a couple of things that you can do when you fertilize that will help you get all caught up. That's okay. There are a couple of things that you can do before you have to start using chemicals. How many of you have rubbing alcohol at home? You're lucky. There is no more. Rubbing alcohol at 70%, you can use it directly as a spray on your plants for insects. It will kill scale, it will kill thrips. The issue with thrips is you got to get it on them and it's really difficult to get it on them. What I usually recommend for thrips is using, I had another product here. Where to put it? Right here.

There are two chemicals that you can use. These are both systemic. Systemic means that it actually gets sucked up into the tissue of the plant. If that insect comes across and scrapes it, the juice that comes out has some of this chemical in it. With it being a systemic like that, that means if it gets on your skin, it goes into your skin also. If you're using these products, please use gloves, wear long sleeves, wear long pants, have a mask on before you use this stuff. You don't want to breathe this stuff into your lungs. If you do get it on your skin, just go wash it off real quick.

Well, I mean, just anything that doesn't have any meat on the bones. Anything that's thick that feels like it's got flesh on it. Leave that. Don't cut everything off. That looks pretty good. The insects... This product, High Yield, is a systemic insect spray. You can use this on your orchids. The chemical ingredient in this is imidacloprid. This is the newer insect spray pesticide that you can buy. It seems to be more effective on thrips. How many of you have used the ant stuff that stinks? The brand name on one product is called Orthine. The active ingredient in it is acephate. Acephate is a systemic. It does get pulled up into the tissue of the plant. This is a powder. I think it's one tablespoon to a gallon of water to mix this up to use as an insect repellent. This is nice and easy. You hook it up to the hose and just go through and spray everything. That'll take care of it. This you have to mix up into a sprayer and then actively go through and spray it on. I'm kind of lazy. I'll go through the easiest way that I can and I'll buy it like this. Is the rubbing alcohol also systemic? No. Rubbing alcohol is a topical, and it kills insects on contact.

The problem with that is you have to wipe it off. The alcohol, it doesn't hurt the plant. It evaporates right away. It's a non-pesticide way of attacking the insects. What's the name of the one that you took on the hose? imidacloprid. I don't have my glasses with me, so I'm going to try. I-M-I... No, I can't read it. imidacloprid. imidacloprid. Spell it. I-M-I-D-A-C-L-O-P-R-I-D. I-M-I-D-A-C-L-O-P-R-I-D. One more time. I-M-I-D-A-C-L-O-P-R-I-D.

Now, if you're using chemicals like this, there's a tip. How many of you have heard of a product called a spreader sticker? Anybody? Spreader sticker is basically like a soap. What that does is it mixes up with the chemical and the water. It's like you going into the shower and washing your hair. You use hair shampoo, you wash your hair. If you don't wash that shampoo out, you've got a mess in your hair and it stays there. That soap will stay there. It won't go away. The idea with these chemicals is you add some soap to them. What that does is it makes a film and it keeps that chemical sticking to the plant. So, every time that I'm using either a fertilizer or a pesticide or a fungicide, I'm adding a type of soap or spreader sticker to it. Now, I don't use Dawn dishwashing detergent. It's a degreaser. It'll strip the natural oils off the plant. So, I don't use Dawn. I will use palm olive. I will use liquid laundry soap.

Now, let's see. Now, the moss like this, you know, it comes out like this nice and wet. Take it when you're going to use it. Take it and just, that's how much water that holds. I mean, it holds a lot of water. You just want to take it, rinse the water out of it, and see how it all breaks up and becomes nice and fluffy. That's what you want to do with your sphagnum moss before you use it to repot. Yeah, sure. Well, some of it floats on the top, so you have to kind of mix it up. So, I probably have enough in here to be able to do what we want to do.

Okay. Yeah, it stinks. It does stink, but, you know, that's one of the things with orchids that you have to deal with. Now, with a phalaenopsis, because it doesn't have a pseudobulb, the root system tends to grow a little bit differently than the catalayas or the dendrobiums. The root system on this tends to come out of the base of the plant with the roots hanging down like a spider. So, when you go to repot these guys, what you're looking for, and you can see it, I mean, right up in here, you know, they all spread out from one point, and they all go off in different directions. When you look at this, you can pretty much tell that it needs to be repotted. The roots have been cleaned up. Typically, what I like to do is, you know, when I'm going to repot, I'll leave them at least four inches so that it has enough roots so that it can take care of itself and feed itself. This had quite a bit that needed to be trimmed off. You did a great job. So, fantastic job.

Now, when you go to repot this thing, what I like to do with this is I'll take a little ball of sphagnum moss, and I like to put it up underneath so that it's actually sitting on that with the roots cascading over the top of it. Okay? Easy to do. This is probably one of the easiest orchids to repot. If you've got this, I mean, it's hands down one of the easiest ones to do. Then what I'll do with that is I will take it and I'll wrap those roots, and I'll start applying a little bit of moss. Do me a favor, grab one of those green plastic pots right here. And I'll layer it around the outside of the root ball. Go ahead and set it down in there. It does. Actually, it really does. If you're growing orchids in clay pots, clay pots have a tendency to wick the moisture away from the root ball. Plastic pots will retain the moisture a little bit better.

For fails, I typically almost always do in a plastic pot if I'm going to grow them inside. If I'm going to grow them outside, I'll do them in a clay pot, or I'll even grow them in a basket. How about those little ones with the holes in them? Can you just plant them right inside this? You can. You can pot them right inside these guys. The ceramic glazed pots do not breathe. You can use these. These have plenty of air holes, so the root system is going to get a chance to dry out. You can use these, but just remember they may not dry out as quickly as a clay pot. With fails, I tend to like to use these as decorative pots, just to stick the pot down in it. You just don't see it as much. I grow fails typically if I'm going to grow them, because I like to have them in the house in a plastic pot. I put them down in a decorative pot.

But yes, you can do these. It sure is. That's the easy way to repot a fail. Now, I'm going to let you do it. I know how to do it. What I'm trying to do is get you guys to learn how to do it. So, outside you can put it in a basket? You can... Yup. Well, outside I wouldn't do the ceramic. I wouldn't do the one that is glazed. If you're going to do outside, I would use a clay pot. Because what happens with this clay is it will actually, because it gets all the air, it's real porous, it will actively wick the moisture away from the interior of the roots. And what happens if I didn't get those under? Just stick them down. You don't have to be gentle with these like us. You do not have to be gentle. Yes, ma'am.

You can grow them directly on the landscape? Yes. Well... Do you want it packed in real good? No. I'll answer your question in just a second, because I want to tell a little bit more about that. When you do repot these, when you put that moss in there, you don't want to pack it in real tight. You want it to be kind of loose so that there's some air movement between the roots and they actually have a chance to dry out a little bit. When you go to water it, you don't want to keep it sopping wet all the time. What I recommend is when you take a plant like this to water it, if you're growing it in the house, put it in the kitchen sink, fill up the pot with water, let it sit there in the sink for a couple of minutes, fill up the pot again in five or ten minutes with water. Because what happens with these orchids and these pots is when you water it the first time, the outside layers soak up all the water first. So if you go back and hit it a second time, that inside ball will eventually get some water to it, so you've watered the orchid correctly.

How many of you use ice cubes? Stand up. Stand up. Don't do that. Ice cubes melt at 32 degrees. These are tropical plants. That's the directions they put on all the plants that you buy in the grocery store. It's like you going up to Lake Michigan in the middle of the winter and jumping in the water. Are you going to be happy? Uh-uh. The same with the orchids. Orchids don't like temperatures, especially fails, don't like temperatures under 50 degrees. Under 50 degrees out in the landscape will kill a fail. If you get a hard freeze, it'll kill it. Ice cubes melt at 32 degrees. That's freezing water. You're putting freezing water on the roots of the plant, and the roots of the plant are the main structure that help it take up moisture and liquids and food. Don't do that. I don't care what these idiots that are telling you, it's a marketing gimmick. Please don't use ice cubes on anything. Yes, sir?

What about tap water versus filtered water versus well water? Yes, it does. Well water in this area has high iron content or sulfur content. It stinks. If it has a high iron content, it can turn your plants orange. The iron will actively sit on the leaves. It'll turn them orange. City water, no problem. You shouldn't have any problem with county water or city water. Now if you're doing, how many of you have a water softener at home? Anybody? Do not water your orchids with water softener, water. Because you're using salt. Salt kills orchids. Immediately it will kill orchids. What do you do if you do have a water softener? Usually there's a valve that you can turn on before the water softener. Get your water from that. Or the outside. The rain barrels. Rain barrels too are another good way to get water. No, not at all.

My whole collection is watered off of city water. I have well on my property. It's got a high iron content. I can't use my well. I'll use it in a landscape, but I won't use it on my orchids. This city of Earl Beach water department just loves me. If you do water with city water, you don't have to worry about the chlorine. Chlorine evaporates after three days in the air anyways. It's going to stop algae growth on your roots on your vandals. My vandal roots at home are great. I don't have any algae on them. They're nice and white. They're nice and pretty. When I go down to Odom's orchids because he's watering off of well water, his orchid roots are all covered in algae. When you water vandals every day, they stay nice and wet, and you do get algae growth on the roots. With my plants at home, I don't have that algae because I have that chlorine in the water. It won't hurt your plants at all.

How many of you have ever heard of Joe Grizzafi up at Melbourne? Grizzafi orchids? Joe had seven greenhouses. Thank you very much. I may put you to work in just a minute too. Joe had seven greenhouses up there. Joe's probably the number one hybridizer in the state of Florida for orchids. Joe, unfortunately, has closed his greenhouses. His greenhouse at home now, he sold everything off, and Joe's not doing orchids anymore because of health issues. But you used to go to Joe's place and all his plants were orange. It was from the iron in the well. It doesn't hurt the plant. It just makes them kind of ugly.

So, yes. So you're saying well water is a new iron and sulfur in it, but if you soften it and filter it, it has salt in it. What should you use? You're on a well, and you're going through a softener. You're going to have to use well water. What I would recommend for you then is to try to water the roots and not the foliage. Yeah. It depends on your water softener brand and what it uses to recharge the system. If you're putting salt in your system. Yeah, you shouldn't be using it. So, hopefully, that will help you a little bit.

Rainwater is probably the best thing that you can give your orchids. I mean, if you can do it, yes. We're in a dry spell so that's kind of tough too. Do the best that you can with what you've got. There's just a couple of things you have to watch out for.

You had a question, right? Who was it that had the question? Oh, in the trees. When you're growing orchids in the trees, I said, you know, you can use sphagnum moss. I've got a client out on the island that I've put 3,500 orchids in his landscape. When we started, we would take the plant out of the pots, bare root them, I'd take a little bit of sphagnum moss, put it up behind the roots, put the plant on there, pack a little bit of sphagnum moss across the top of the roots, and tie it on the tree. What we've found is that sphagnum moss does nothing but grow ferns, so we've stopped using sphagnum moss. We bare root the plants now, we strap them on the tree. If you're doing them on dwarf robolini palms, yeah, they grow really great on dwarf robolini palms because they have that natural fiber up and down the trunk. The phalaenopsis, cattalayas, dendrobiums, you name it, you know, they'll all do great out in the landscape. You just have to tie them on, and I tie them on with, I had it here, where to put it.

Do you use sphagnum moss or like palm tree fibers? Yes, you can. Spanish moss, if you're doing like a Vanda especially, because Vanda is like a lot of more humidity around the roots. As you can drape Spanish moss down the roots, it will help keep moisture around those roots and keep them a little bit happier. When I'm tying orchids in the landscape, I use this green stretch tape. You can buy it at any garden center. I know Dan and Tina have it here at Busybee, so use this stuff. This is the way it comes, comes in a roll like this. I tie the orchid onto a tree. I bare root it, put it on the tree, tie the roots on. I'll trim the roots back to four inches, tie it on there. Make sure that when you put it on, I'll do another example.

You're going to have to move the camera because we're going to do a demonstration real quick. Now I'm going to say something about phalaenopsis. Phalaenopsis do not grow like this. In the wild, phalaenopsis will tilt over and hang. If you mount a phalaenopsis in the landscape like this, what's going to happen is when it starts raining every day in the summer, you're going to get water caught up in the crown. It will rot the top of the plant out. If you're going to mount, there's a couple of ways to do it. You can either take the plant and mount it upside down, which is the way it grows in the wild anyway. Even though it's got flower spikes on it like this right now, next year's flower spikes when it comes up, they're going to come up like this. This year it's going to look unsightly and ugly, but that's okay. Next year it's going to be beautiful.

What I will do with an orchid when I go to mount it, and I'm not done an example on how to mount here yet, I'll take the plant and try and tie it on so that crown doesn't stand up. If I have to and I can't get it to stand up, I'll hang it so it's hanging down like that a little bit, or I'll tilt it so it sits like that. Typically what I'm trying to do is stop water from collecting in the crown on the root. You want to make sure that it doesn't get a chance to hold water in that crown. When you tie it on, I might need a third hand. Hold that orchid for a second, just stand back so that he can see you from the camera. What I'm trying to do is lock the roots down on the plant. Go ahead and let go for a second.

The object of this is to get the oak tree branch out of the way. There we go. What you want to do when you get it on here is you want that thing to be sturdy and secure so that the roots don't wiggle when I got the one. You got this one? I got the loose one. Okay.

What happens if it goes below 40 degrees? That's the interesting thing about fails in orchids in the landscape. How many of you know me from Orchid Island Botanicals when it was open? We used to have orchids out in the greenhouse. All right. Both ends. All right. Where is that? There it is. Nope. Too tight.

When you do this, you'll be careful about pulling it too tight because that tape will break. They don't, but there's a trick with fails. It just doesn't want to cooperate, of course. The thing with orchids is it's funny. When we had orchids in pots, if we left them out in a cold snap, especially if fails, fails when they're developing flower buds, will blast the flowers if it goes under 50 degrees or we get a freeze.

When they're on a tree, once they've been established on the tree, there's something about that symbiotic relationship that tends to protect the orchid, whether it's underneath a canopy so that frost doesn't settle on it. I've had orchids that we've put in a landscape that have not suffered one bit. Even though the temperatures have gone down, the temperature of the tree doesn't go down. It's like a heat sink, so it does protect it a little bit. If we're going to have a hard freeze, cover them up. You can wrap Christmas lights around them because they'll generate a little bit of heat to keep that frost or cold off of them. But typically, no.

If you wanted it in the ground to set them on a tree, how would you do that to prevent the water from filling up in the ground? I would not do a fail in the ground. Any of your potted orchids, like Catalaeus, Dendrobium, Phalaenopsis, typically don't like to be in soil. In the landscape or out in the wild in South America, there are Catalaeus species that grow on rock outcroppings. Orchids are epiphytic. They're not terrestrial typically. Epiphytic means they'll grow on rocks or trees, something else that's up off the ground that they're not sitting in soil. The roots on this, after a couple of years, will go all up and down this trunk. They'll stay all over that.

What happens in the wild in South America, they call it in situ where the orchids are in their natural landscape habitat. On rock outcroppings, what happens is they'll start in a depression and they'll get established in there. What happens is all the detritus and debris starts to filter into that depression and we'll fill that hole up. How many of you have seen the big orchid out on the island? I've told you guys about it time after time. Out on A1A, when you go across the Barber Bridge, you go out to A1A, make a left, go down to Fiddlewood. Fiddlewood, you make a right, like you're going towards the beach. There's a crossroad there, not the house on the corner on the left. It's the one house back in from the corner and it's on the left-hand side of the road on Fiddlewood. There's an oak tree and in the crotch of the oak tree, it started down in the crotch and it went up both sides of the branches. It's a big shumburky orchid. It's been on that tree for 50-something years, if not 60. It has taken hurricanes, it has taken, you remember the freezes we had back in 2010? It went through all of that without missing a beat. That orchid is as big as my truck. When it blooms, it's usually in bloom in late May through June and July. Sometimes not very often, sometimes they'll last into August, but typically the main bloom for that is late May, June.

How do you care for that once you have wrapped it there? Do you need the water to feed it for a certain time? Yep, you sure do. Good question. I've got some people, the guy that I put the 3,500 orchids in the landscape. He had his irrigation company come in and run a specific line to each tree. He put water lines that run up into the trees with misters. I've got another client that had a landscaper that, boy, the insects and the stuff is just bugging the crap out of me, sorry, that took the polylines and put emitters on them that flood water out. That client just lost a huge oak tree across her driveway because all that water sitting on the oak tree saturated into the cracks and crevices and rotted the entire tree out. She now has four other trees that she's got a tree surgeon coming out to make sure that they're structurally sound because of that.

If you're going to do a landscape, an irrigation line up into the tree, put risers on it and put a misting head on it. You can get them at any of the sprinkler supply stores. They'll sell them to you. Do it that way. Do not just flood the tree. I would only water it once a week that way. Now, if you're mounting in the landscape like this, take the garden hose and mist it down a couple of times a week while the roots are getting established. You should be fertilizing it because that plant needs food to generate new root growth and new leaf growth and also so it flowers.

Yes, ma'am? Shriveled? Are they mounted in the landscape or how often are you watering it? That's why they're turning wrinkled in leathery. What they're doing is they're sacrificing the moisture out of those leaves to keep the top part, the new growth, going. So if you water it a little more frequently and right now we're not getting any rain, so you have to water them, you'll find that it will push new growth out and they won't look like that. The wrinkled drupea leaves are eventually going to turn yellow and fall off.

How often do you get should you fertilize? We'll touch fertilizer in just a minute. We have a lot of stuff that are naturally from the roots of the trees. If the branch comes down, can we separate that plant from the branch? Yeah, just peel it off gently. You can wet it first, soak it down real good with a hose, wet it down, and then it will typically peel right off. That's what I did with this one. This came off the tree that came down across her driveway. And then you can just replant that tree. Yep, just put it back up, put it in an area where they're, pass that around because it's got some of the matting from the resurrection fern. That's in sicklea tempensis. In sicklea tempensis is all over the state of Florida from like Tampa up to, I would say Daytona and further south. Well, it actually goes up to St. Augustine. Oh, does it go up all that way? Yeah, there's a beautiful forest up there. It's a little litty-bitty flower like that. They're yellowish. No, that's not the dancing lady. In this area, they call it a butterfly orchid.

No, no, we'll do the dendrobium next and that'll apply to Cadillac. Other, any of the orchids with the pseudobulps, we'll do next. All right, who's not repotted an orchid before? All right, come on up front. Now, you're going to see dendrobiums. What's wrong with this plant? No. Any guesses? It barely has any leaves on it. All right, this is a hard-cained dendrobium. Hard-cained dendrobiums don't like 50 degrees or below. What happens with them is they will drop the leaves on them when they get cold, but what will happen is you will get new growth that comes out each spring and it'll develop a new cane with all new leaves on them. You want to go ahead and pull that moss off of there? Here, pull this thing out so you don't stab yourself either.

You can, yes. You can either take it, if it's something new that you're putting in the landscape and you want to give it a chance to get established, you don't want it sending energy into that flower spike, so cut it back at the base. Let it spend its energy producing new roots and new leaves for next year. Let it build up the energy. If you're going to keep it in a pot, you can cut it back. Once this is done flowering, you can take it and cut it back at these nodes. If you cut this one right here, it's already sending a growth spot out of this node. They will respite out of that node, but you've got to have that cooler temperature to get it to respite. Fallenopsis have to have temperatures 15 to 20 degrees lower than the daytime temperature. At night, that temperature has got to drop that 15 to 20 degrees for about three weeks to get it to initiate the flower spike. No, leave it outside. The natural temperature drop during the winter here will initiate the flower spike on these guys without any problem.

The ones that are in the house, that's why they never re-flower. Bingo. So if you keep it in the house all the time, your temperature in the house is the same day tonight. You're not getting that 15 to 20-degree temperature drop. Yeah, there's not much roots left on that. They're pretty much shot, but that's okay. This is the time you want to do it anyways. You just want to gently peel all that moss out of there that you can. Yes? The plant that you're passing around has all those little different bulbs. Each one of those eight plants, so you could pull that apart.

You could pull that apart into several different pieces, and what will happen is on the nodes on the bottom of each pseudobulb, there should be an eye, and it may pop once you divide it, and an old eye will wake up and start to grow. Now Tempensis, when I pull them off the trees and clumps, I try to leave the clump alone and just reattach it to the tree and put it back on.

You could. The issue is when you're repotting like a Cadillac or a Dendrobium, typically you want four canes or four pseudobulbs to get a good, sturdy, healthy plant. If you've got a plant that's only got six pseudobulbs or six canes, don't do it. It's not strong enough yet. Like I said, you want at least four. You want a mother and three sisters. That's about all plants. If you need to get the new plants that's coming off, you need at least three inches or three nodes. Yep.

Now, this gentleman brought in his Dendrobium. This is a different type of Dendrobium. This is a Dendrobium noble, and this is the time of year that these guys are blooming. The thing with these guys is during October, you stop fertilizing this. What happens, all leaves turn yellow and they all fall off. During the spring, what happens is you can see where on each node he's got a new plant developing. What happens is if during the dry season, these have to have a hard dry-out season where they get no food. What happens is when they're in that dormancy period and when they're getting ready to start to produce flowers, that node will wake up and you'll start to get the growth. If you fertilize it, what you get are new plants and not flowers.

This is a Dendrobium noble. They're pretty. There was a lot of misconception about them. A lot of people weren't growing them real well. There's a trick to these, and I'll tell you about that when we finish with this guy. I'll tell you how to take care of this. We're going to talk about that when we do that one. Got everything off of it? Yep. She's got everything cleaned off of it. On this plant, see that little triangle? That's your new growth, getting ready to pop and start growing. This has an eye, now it's a little triangle that comes up in the bottom of the pseudobulb. That's the eye. That's your new growth that's getting ready to come up and start growing. This plant is getting ready to start breaking dormancy and it's going to send up the new growth.

With these guys, I like to do bark with them. If you want to open this one up for me and just dump some in there. With these guys, when you go to repot them, when it's time to take it out of the old pot, how many of you have taken an orchid? Just go ahead and dump the bag in there. It's not going to matter. That's good right there. When you take it out of a pot and you think, okay, it's time to repot it, I've taken it out of, where is that little four-inch pot? Here it is. I've taken it out of this pot and I want to put it in this pot. I'm hearing the right answers. That's good.

Orchids like to be root bound. They like to be pot bound. They don't like a lot of room because if they have a lot of room, they wiggle. So if they wiggle, the root tips will rub against something. That goes the same for a mounted plant. If you tie it on there, make sure you tie it on there tight so that while those roots are on the tips of the branch or the tree or even in the pot, they don't sit there and rub back and forth. If those root tips rub back and forth, it will kill the root tip. It won't grow. So when you go to repot a plant, you want to step up to the next size-up plant. Now with dendrobiums, dendrobiums especially like to be root bound. They like tight growing spaces.

This one was growing in sphagnum moss. I'm going to repot it back in its original pot. Typically at home, I would take this, wash it out, kind of rinse it out, clean it up a little bit. I don't really have that option right now, but I'm going to show you how to repot it. When you go to put these guys in here, every orchid has a front and a back. The back are the old pseudobulbs. Now everybody asks me, do you take those off? Yes and no. On an older plant where the pseudobulb is real thin, there are no leaves on it and it's real shriveled up or it's turned brown, yeah, you want to take that off. This only has four on it, so I'm going to leave these four on it. The reason being is this pseudobulb actually acts like a battery. It stores food and water for the plant. It's going to keep enough nutrients in it to help it to get that new growth to develop so that it can feed that new growth if it's not getting enough food like it should.

Would you cut this one? Yes. Torch. Oh. There it is. Oh. There it is. You are going to disinfect your hands, right? No, I'm going to disinfect her hands. Like I said, every time before you go from one orchid to another and if you're doing this, if you see any embers glowing, that means you still have organic material on there and you typically want to make sure that you've killed any organic material on there by the flame. Now, even though this flower spike is brown, it's dead, it's not going to transfer any liquid back down into the pseudobulb, still use clean clippers. It only takes one time and you've messed up that plant.

And then I'll take the old flower spikes off just because they're unsightly. That way you've got a clean looking plant and it looks nice. Now I'm going to let you repot. Now, like I said, when you do repot these guys, there's a front side and a back side. If you were to take this plant and the front side is here where the new growth is going to come out, if you were to take that plant and put it in the middle of the pot, what's going to happen? It's going to grow into the side of the pot and then grow out of the pot real quick.

If you take it and you take the back side, the old side, put it in the pot and put it up against the back side of the pot like this, it gives that plant a couple of years to grow in that pot, grow across that pot because it will grow across that pot and eventually grow out. It grows from the front, not the back. That way you actually give the plant more time to be in there and you won't have to repot it. If you put it in the middle, I'm going to guarantee you you're going to end up repotting it next year. So put it in the back. Don't overpot it. You could probably take it and put it into a, well, that's a six-inch, that's a little bit big. If I had a clay pot, this one's cracked, I'm not going to use this, this is from home. If I had a clay pot like this, I'd put it in this because it's just a little bit bigger. There are some that are five inches. You could put it into the next step up size pot and it should last a couple of seasons without having to repot it. But for the nursery sake, we're just going to repot it back in its original pot. And then if somebody wants to buy it, they can buy it or it'll go back in their hospital section and we'll let them continue to go.

Have you repotted? No. An orchid before? No. Okay. When you repot an orchid, if you put it in the pot, you can pot it too deep. If you pot it below where that node is coming out, sometimes that node will push through and come out, but you're better off when you repot it, not potting it any deeper than the top of my finger. If you put it up like that, you know, to make the orchid sit still in the pot, you may knock the eye off. You could break that little eye off very easily. I've done it a thousand times and more. So just be real careful when you do it.

Now, I'm going to let you... When you take these guys, you put them in the pot like this, you put the backside up against, fill in with a little bark, tuck it down in with your finger. And what I'll do is I'll place it a little low as I'm packing the bark in and I'll lift up. So I make sure that that eye isn't below the bark.

You said no, do you not put a little bit of bark in before you put it in? Is it wrong to do it that way or do you just do it that way?
No, you can do it that way. If you want to raise it up so that you're not tearing that eye. When I repot, I'm comfortable with not putting it down in the, unless I've got a really big plant, then I'll put the bark down on the bottom. But typically I'll hold the plant and then fill in and just tuck it in. And you have to tuck it in with your finger. Do not use a wooden stake or something to jam that bark down in there. Your finger will do just fine.

When you're still trying to move it up, you're still trying to move it enough to keep it from moving but enough air circulation in the bark.
Right. Well, the bark is going to, you're going to keep that air circulation between the bark until that bark gets old and it starts to decompose. Once it starts to decompose, it's going to turn into a mud type deal, then it's time to repot it.

Alright, see how that, see how I've done that? That eye is right there, okay? I told you, I teach by example. That's the best way to learn, especially with orchids. Lift your plant up just a little bit. So, as far as the different things you can find, the orchid mix, the bark, and you have the sphagnum moss, does it matter for each variety?

Yes. Anything with a pseudobulb, typically you want a mix that is well-draining. Moss tends to hold moisture and hold liquid, so it's not as well-draining. You want to use that more towards your orchid species that don't have a pseudobulb. So anything with a pseudobulb, you want to use a bark mix that drains freely and really well.

Is that enough now?
Pretty good. But you can see how I'm just tucking down in there like that. And sometimes what I'll do is I'll hold on to that thing just in the back and tuck it in like that. And you don't have to worry that you're pulling any of the roots or anything. Hold on. Just one second. I'm sorry, what? Doing that, you're not worrying that you're going to do anything to the roots? No. No, you're not going to hurt that plant one bit. What happens is when you repot a Cadillac or a Dendrobium, anything that has a pseudobulb with the roots, when you pull it out, those roots that you're pulling out will eventually develop new root tips off those old roots. They'll start growing new roots, but it's that new growth that comes out off the front of the plant that's going to come out and it will develop new roots. That's what's going to lock that plant back into that pot.

Now on something like this, grab this real quick, if it's not real steady in the pot, you can take a stake, push it down in there. And you can use the twist tie wire, you can use the little butterfly clips, stake it up so it doesn't wiggle around in the pot and it's repotted. Not so hard, is it? Everybody makes it sound like it's really difficult. It really isn't that bad. You can mount these in trees. I have mounted every type of orchid in the landscape except for lady slippers.

Lady slippers, I will not do in the landscape. That's a whole other ballgame that we're not even going to go there. Now if you've got epidendrams, these are great plants to grow out in the landscape, in the dirt. Full sun, they'll cook all day long and just make a hell of a show. My client out on the island has two areas on each side of her driveway that are probably from you to you long and about three feet wide. It's just solid orange and it's beautiful.

Now I want to talk about how many of you feed your orchids every month? All right, how many of you feed your orchids every six months? Raise your hands. Okay, once a month, once every other week, how about once a week? All right, I'm going to give you an analogy. If I were to send you to McDonald's once a week on Friday and told you you could only have a cheeseburger, how would you do? Not very well. Yeah, no cheating. This isn't a diet.

When you're caring for orchids, the stuff that's in the pots is not going to give any nutritional value to the orchids at all. They have no food value to them at all. You have got to fertilize them. Whether you're using a water-soluble and it doesn't matter what brand you use, just as long as you're giving them some fertilizer, I've seen people use Miracle Grow to the better grow formulas to Jax, Jax Classic in the 2020 and also the Bloom Booster. I don't care what brand you use, as long as you are using some form of water-soluble orchid fertilizer.

This is my go-to when I'm fertilizing the orchids in the landscape. The mix rate in this is 16 to 1, just like on these packets. All I have to do is open it up, open up the packet, dump the fertilizer in there, fill it up with water to the top, put it back on, attach it to the hose, and I'm good to go. What I will do is I'll add a little bit of soap to it so it gets that soapy mix to it that you are feeding the orchids. My orchids at home, every time I water caterpillars, little green caterpillars coming out of the oak trees, yay. When I water and fertilize, I have a sprinkler system. I have what's called a fertilizer injector. Every time my water turns on in my greenhouse, they're getting a little bit of food.

My fertilizer mix really weak so they get a little bit of food every time they get watered. Like I said, if I were to give you a cheeseburger once a week, you wouldn't be very healthy, but if I feed you a balanced diet every day or every week, you're going to do a lot better. Now I realize you guys can't do that every day, maybe not even every week. Some of us just plain forget. Once every two weeks is probably the best. If you can't do it once a month, it's okay, but at least try and make sure you give them some food.

For this, I'll put about four tablespoons. I want it to be nice and frothy. Now there's a kick to that too, is that soap and that fertilizer makes it actually stick to the plant. So it helps it adhere, it doesn't just run through the pot. So even when you get it in the pot and then the roots, it helps it just stick in that pot and just not run right through. You had a question?

When I'm doing plants in the landscape, once I first put them out for the first six months, I'll go through and water and fertilize them every week just to help them get established. All the plants that I've got out on the island that I've done for people now are established. I'm not fertilizing or watering them anymore. They're taking care of themselves now. Now the clients that I've got that have put a lot of work is in have run water lines up with misters so that they get misted by the sprinkler system if we're not getting rain. I was still taking care of that and they didn't have those water lines. Right now I would be coming through once a week and watering them.

Good question. When you fertilize your orchids, when you water them, how does that get into the plant? What's the main apparatus a plant has to take in nutrients? The roots. You can spray the foliage. It'll take a little bit in, but the main feeding apparatus on a plant is in the roots. Make sure it goes to the pot or in the roots. You can get some foliar feeding through the leaves and stuff, but you want to make sure that you're hitting the roots more than anything. Okay.

What I usually recommend with somebody that has just a couple, mix up an old one-gallon milk jug with your fertilizer and a milk jug and add a teaspoon to the gallon of orchid fertilizer and water and just mix it up, shake it up. The bonus with the soap and everybody's dealing with thrips right now. Thrips are the biggest problem. Immature scale also can be a real problem with Kettleias. What happens is with soap is thrips and scale juvenile insects. They breathe through pores in the structure on the insect, on the body. They don't have lungs like you and I, so the air that they get is through little pores in the body. When you put soap on them, it suffocates them, smothers them.

There's a difference with hard scale, that little round button that you'll find on a plant. Flick that off because that hard waxy covering, the soap will not dissolve that and it won't get to it. Rubbing alcohol won't dissolve it, but it'll help clean everything off and you have to wipe it off either with a toothbrush or a paper towel or something to get the hard scale buttons off. How many Vandas do you have? No. Because what would happen is if you mixed it up in a big bucket and you took one plant and put it in there and then took it out, hung it back up, you took the next plant and put it in there. That Vanda has, Vandas are really susceptible to a type of fungus called tycrud and it's spread by water.

Most of your fungal diseases, most of your diseases like rot are spread through water, so you do not want to do that. What I would recommend is buying a sprayer like this. If you've got Vandas in your collection, you have to water them every day anyway. What I usually recommend is getting a hose and sprayer, putting the fertilizer in there and water them down first so the roots start turning green again and then come back through with your fertilizer in your soap and just thoroughly wet them after they've been wet down first. Don't sit there and wet them down where the roots turn totally green and you've been watering them for 5 or 10 minutes. Just wet them down real quick, wait about 2 or 3 minutes, then come back through and hit them.

What happens on orchid roots? Orchid roots, what you're looking at with this white part is not the root itself. It's a waxy coating called vellum. Let's see if I can show. I may not be able to show on this one. It's easier on a big cat. Yeah, I can show you on this. The waxy coating, the white coating is actually, it's a device that helps the orchid retain moisture in the root. It protects the actual root. If you look at this, there's two little side branches and you're gonna see a little string. That's the actual root. What this waxy coating does is it keeps water from coming back out of the plant and evaporating, but when you go to water it, when you water it, this root will actually start to turn green. It means that the pores on that waxy coating are starting to open and it's actually allowing the plant to take the nutrients in, pass that around. You can see the root real easily with that. That's when you know that you're making sure that you're getting fertilizer to the plants.

I tend to tell people it's like a pump. You have to prime it before you can actually get it to put water out. With the roots on an orchid, you want to prime it before you feed it. Water it a little bit before you start putting fertilizer on it. If you've got plants that you've not fertilized in a long time and you go and put fertilizer on them, you can burn them. How many of you use a slow release pellet? Are you using Osmocote? Don't. For dynamite, Osmocote has a new slow release out called Sunny Coat and it's a yellow. You can buy it. If you're using that, don't use the regular Osmocote that you buy in the jar. Look for the brand that says Sunny Coat that's made for Florida. The problem with Osmocote is in the Florida heat, that fertilizer dumps everything at once.

When it gets hot and to a certain humidity, all that fertilizer comes out of that pellet. It doesn't release slowly. It dumps it all at once and it burns the roots. Dynamite, which is the gray pellet or NutriCoat, is better to use than Osmocote, but Osmocote has come out with a new product that you can use. Can you use that instead of doing the water-soluble fertilizer? If you're dead lazy and you're not going to water your orchids with fertilizer or you're going away for the summer, put some slow release on the top. If you're going away and you're tucking them in the bushes, at least they're getting something. Or if you're lucky, you can get a neighbor that will come over and fertilize them for you. The slow release is a good substitute if you're not going to be there, but you should still be using a water-soluble.

I want to talk about this guy over here because they have become the new hot orchid to grow. Dendrobium nobles are a different creature altogether. You can see this mix. This mix has turned, it's decomposing and it's turning to mud. There's not a lot of roots left on that. The difference with a plant like this, I'm not going to repot this in this. I'm going to put it back into a plastic pot for you. When you repot an orchid, you don't want to put a plant right back in that. You want to clean that pot, disinfect it, sterilize it with bleach, scrub it, let it air out and dry out because there's rot going on in there. I can guarantee.

You can tell by what's left of the roots on this plant. There's barely any root system on this plant right now. Dendrobium nobles are totally different animals altogether because of one reason. They like a dormancy period where they don't get fertilizer. This orchid, you can actually grow in full sun. If you grow it at your house, you can grow it on the east side where it gets that full morning sun until about noon and then you want it to be in some dappled light from noon to four o'clock. I took one of these. Normally when you get these, most people would get maybe two, three, four blooms on a plant. The ones that I've got going in the greenhouse now, I just took down to the Port St. Lucie show and I had probably 200 flowers on it easily.

I took best in the show, which is for a dendrobium noble, that's, I mean, look, I got to be honest. I'm going to tap myself on the back. That's unheard of. Oh, I've got plastic here. Thank you. Anybody needs some? Here we go. They're free. Cool. Thank you very much. Dendrobium nobles are a totally different thing now because it looks like you fed it while it was sending out the growth. You got new plants instead of flowers. When you buy these, buy the heck out of them because these canes, when they get full size, you get flowers all the way up the cane. Now in October, once the weather starts turning cool, you withhold the food from them, leaves are going to turn yellow. They're going to fall off. That's normal for this plant.

You want it to do that. You want it to look like it's dead. And it's not dead. It's doing its thing. These grow over in Thailand on teak trees. The teak trees during the winter drop all their leaves, so these plants sit out in full sun. This is an orchid that you can acclimate to growing in full sun. If you were to take this now and put it out on the east side of the house, you may get some sunburn on here. It doesn't matter. These leaves are supposed to fall off in the fall. If you burn them this year, if you put them out there, I wouldn't sweat it. I wouldn't sweat it one bit.

Now with this, because it's growing in full sun, if I were to do it that way, the way plants cool themselves off is they take up water through the roots and they evaporate it out through the top of the leaf. It's called transpiration. With that saying, that's how that plant keeps itself cool. It's how all of these plants keep themselves cool. So if you're getting hot and you're getting more sunlight, you want to make sure that you're giving it more water.

With these, a friend of mine, Denham Fort Lauderdale, is probably one of the best orchid growers I've ever met. We've had him up here doing a couple of lectures and I'm trying to get him to come back up again, but he grows all of these in sphagnum moss, which is, you know, it's a dendrobium. I've told you not to grow them in sphagnum moss. So there's always an exception to that rule with plants with pseudobulbs. But remember, if you're growing this out in full sun, you're giving that plant a chance to develop more energy, so it's going to develop more flowers in the blooming season. So the more growth you get on it, the more you feed it, the more light it gets, the more energy it can build up for that bloom. So that's what you want to do with this guy.

Now to repot this guy, I'm going to borrow your box for a second. Boy, this stuff really does stink, doesn't it? Now this, you know, this is a big enough plant. You've got enough growth on here, you could make two plants out of it. Now I'm a proponent, too, that I like my plants to get a little bit bigger, and I like a specimen because you've got a better show when they bloom. The reason for that is I've got one Kettleia at home that started blooming in November. I've had flowers on that plant every month since. The next two flowers just opened up two days ago, and it's a Kettleia, it's a different type of plant. But once you get a bigger plant, you'll get a show for longer, because not all the growths are going to open up at once.

Now this, you could divide, I could easily take it and turn it into two plants, I'm not going to do that for you, I'm going to leave it as one, yes. Single edge razor blade or clean sterile pair of clippers, you can do that. Sometimes they'll break apart naturally, very easily I could get this to break apart naturally. Now the kikis on this, to get the kikis off of here, what you need to do is you need to cut the Pseudobulb. And then each set of kikis, you need to put in a little pot with a little moss and let them grow that way. You can't peel them off of there, they're going to die. You have to actually cut the Pseudobulb.

Now, to get a kiki off of a plant so that it will survive, you've got to have at least four roots on that kiki. And those roots have got to be at least this long. These are big enough that you could actually take that Pseudobulb and cut it, take those sections and pot each one up and you get a new plant. But that's up to you, I'll let you decide to do that at home, okay? Now you can leave them on, they'll continue to grow as part of the parent plant. They don't become a new plant until you separate them from the parent. You can leave them on there because they'll bloom eventually too when the parent plant blooms.

So what I like to do with these guys and the way I'm growing them at home, a lot of times you can grow them in a basket, grow those in a basket with moss, put it outside, water it every day, water it every two or three days at least. If I do this in moss, there's not a lot left for a root system on this so I'm going to leave what's there and use it as an anchoring point to hold the plant in the pot. Now this one I'm going to center in the center of the pot because it's a pretty full plant and it's got growths coming off in different directions. It's got a new front going off in different directions on this plant. That's what happens when you get a bigger plant, what we call a specimen, is you start getting growth going in different directions. So that'll give this plant a chance to actually develop and keep going.

Now for a long time people were buying these and not getting them to bloom. We found that in Florida if you grow them in a pot, plastic pot with sphagnum moss, when you take this home, put it on the east side of the house so that it gets morning sunlight. You can go ahead and water and fertilize it now. You're not going to see any blooms on this till next winter. Dendrobium nobles typically bloom one time a year and we're in that period right now. I don't know if you're going to see any right now in the Home Depot or Lowe's stores but they've been sending them out through that company, BetterGrow. Look for them, they're a neat plant, they're really fun to grow and they put off a hell of a show.

No, it's an epiphyte, it's an epiphyte just like the Catalaeus or the other Dendrobiums. October through the bloom. Usually about once the temperatures start dropping, I usually about the end of October stop fertilizing all of mine. Do they bloom all the time? Maybe kind of what they're doing, the boot of a palm. Yes, you can, except for slippers or terrestrials. You can't put them in the boot of a palm. Now there's a warning with putting orchids in a boot of a palm. I had a client or a customer one time bring in a big Oncidium Special Autumn that was on a palm, she put it originally in a boot, it got so big it peeled all the boots off the palm and it fell on the ground. If you're going to put them on a palm tree, put them on the boot but try and attach it where it's not attached to the boot, try and get it attached to the tree itself.

I mean if you can, remove the boots around that where you're going to put it so that it stays on and attaches actually to the tree. I have a question about the nobles. Do they use all of their leaves? They're supposed to. I have one that I was given last year and I couldn't figure out what it was and I thought it was a nobles because the flowers are actually coming right out of the tree. I don't understand. What does that leave from? The thing with the Dendrobium nobles is they like that cold temperature. We've not been cold enough to actually get them to go completely dormant. They've stayed in growth mode.

Even mine that I took to the show still had leaves all over it but I had that bloom. You have to stress this type of orchid out and withhold food from it. You've got to starve it during the winter to get it to bloom. Any, yes?

Right. If you're watering them all the time, yes. If you're not going to water it all the time, you're better off keeping it in sphagnum because it's going to keep that moisture. If you're growing it in full sun, because remember it's going to take up a lot more liquid because it's building new plants a lot faster. When you grow this in full sun, you're going to really push it. It's going to grow like a weed.

What will happen is once this gets to a certain size, each individual cane as it gets older will get bigger. I expect to see this in a year. I'll hunt you down. Like I said with mine, I grow them with my vandals. They get watered every day. They get fertilizer every day and they grow like a weed. Before, I used to get maybe 10, 12 flowers on a plant. I'm getting hundreds now. It makes a big difference.

How many of you, we're not in that period yet, have had black rot or fungus problems? Typically on the leaf or the plant turns to mush and dies. We had that rain problem for almost a week. At the onset of our rainy period, I usually recommend that you go through and put a systemic fungicide on your plants. How many of you use a copper for a fungicide? Don't use it on orchids. Copper kills orchids.

If you're using fungicide, there are a bunch of different varieties. My go-to is thiamyl. This little bottle, it's a white powder. This is my go-to, it's a systemic. If you've got vandals, you want to be using this. You should be using this with vandals on a regular basis anyways. Remember, fungus is a water-borne pathogen and it will spread by water. If you're putting this on there, you're giving your plants some immunity to a lot of the fungal problems and diseases. Thiamyl, it's a white powder. It's easy to mix up into a pump-up sprayer. I'm going to recommend that you use this.

If you have to, if you have to do it on a regular basis, go to a different type of fungicide. Every once in a while, don't use the same thing all the time. But typically, this is my go-to. These are my other two go-tos. Captan is another wettable fungicide. And then Dithane M45. This is a yellow powder. It tends to cake up when you mix it up. So you really have to mix this stuff up when you use it. But these are actually safe to use on your orchids without any problems and you can get them here at the store.

Okay? Anybody have any more questions? No? Alright. Well, thank you for coming. I hope I've taught you a little bit.