Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, borticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. Orchids, they astound me. I don't know much about them, but today we are going to learn all about them with horticulture educator Jack Schooley here on the show. But before we get to Jack, you know I'm not doing this by myself.
Chris Enroth: 00:29I'm joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 00:35Hello, Chris. Have you had much success growing orchids in your life?
Chris Enroth: 00:40No. But the thing is my mother-in-law loves orchids. And so, I mean, I'm always, like, picking something up at, like, Aldi's or Hy Vee or somewhere for. So and they don't live very long. I've tried all different kinds of things.
Chris Enroth: 00:56I've even showered with orchids before. So I'm in interested to know what we get into today. And we are also joined, as always, every single week by horticulture educator, Emily Swihart in Milan, Illinois. Emily, welcome to the show.
Emily Swihart: 01:12Hi, guys. Good to see you. Chris, I'm in the same boat. I love orchids, but I used to have good luck. And I don't recall changing anything in particular, but now I don't have great luck.
Emily Swihart: 01:28And so I'm excited to learn maybe what I've been doing wrong, and if I should, maybe invest in some more or just let it let it be a hobby I admire from afar. But they're gorgeous, so I'm very excited to to talk with Jack today.
Chris Enroth: 01:41So we're all questions today. So we better bring Jack onto the show here. So today, we are joined by horticulture educator Jack Schooley in Des Plaines, Illinois. Jack, welcome to the show.
Jack Schooley: 01:55Thanks for having me, guys. Been listening to the podcast, and I'm excited to be on today to talk about orchids, one of my longest running horticulture kinda sub hobbies. So hopefully, I can answer your questions.
Chris Enroth: 02:10I hey. You know what? You're here, you're starting from, like, a very base level of knowledge, at least with me. So there's only one way to go, and that's up. So so I'm looking forward to it.
Chris Enroth: 02:21So, Ken, would you mind kicking us off on this week's questions, please?
Ken Johnson: 02:26Yes. So, Jack, this is the first time we've had you on. So, usually, first time guests, we ask them a little bit about their background. So if you wanna share that. And and how did you get into Growing Orchids?
Jack Schooley: 02:38Yeah. So I was born and raised in Southern California in Burbank, which, if you're not familiar, is about twenty minutes from Downtown LA. It's where all the studios are, Disney and Nickelodeon, all that kind of stuff. Went to Montana for undergrad and Northwestern for grad school, which is how I ended up up here in Cook County. But I started growing orchids all the way back in middle school as, you know, I was a very popular kid growing flowers in my bedroom, but I started with miniature orchids that I actually got at a reptile show.
Jack Schooley: 03:18That was my first passion, was reptile keeping. I went to a show and a guy named Andy Phillips, who owns Andy's Orchids, spent about an hour walking a, you know, sixth grader through his booth explaining how to take care of all of these different orchids. I walked away with, you know, an armful, probably killed half of them, but it kinda started this obsession for me. And from there, I joined the Orchids Society of Southern California. I was the youngest member at the time, but I did that all the way up until I left for college, and kinda the the rest is history.
Jack Schooley: 04:03Now horticulture is my career. So that's kinda how I got my start.
Emily Swihart: 04:08Oh, I did not know any of that about you. That's fantastic. Of course, you're new, so this is why we're all learning about you
Jack Schooley: 04:15too, I should say.
Emily Swihart: 04:16We haven't been colleagues for many, many years. Everybody should know that. You're relatively new to Extension, but that's fascinating. I love you know, we all have kids, and I just I was just sitting here thinking, like, I love the idea of a sixth grader just being invested in in such a cool way, and then and look where it led you. So that's fantastic.
Jack Schooley: 04:36Yeah. My my parents were very supportive of driving me to the church, the the the church basement where the Orchids Society was housed once a month for my meetings. They would drop me off and then go home and pick me up, and they were even supportive of me kind of having a mini greenhouse in my bedroom, which was nice of them. I had rack systems and grow lights. I I was growing at one time about 50 species of orchids in my bedroom under grow lights.
Emily Swihart: 05:11Wow. That's incredible. Okay.
Ken Johnson: 05:16Alright.
Emily Swihart: 05:16Well, so
Chris Enroth: 05:16I'm glad we've we've found the right person here, everyone. I know.
Emily Swihart: 05:21You were chosen at random, but that worked out. No. Well, let's get into it since you have this, like, long history of being involved with orchids. And so I'm gonna start off with what we alluded to earlier, which is that orchids do have kind of a reputation for being difficult to grow. Could you help us understand, like, if that's really true?
Emily Swihart: 05:45And, like, what are some of the biggest, like, misconceptions about growing orchids? Like, set the record straight if it needs to be.
Jack Schooley: 05:51Okay. I think this is, you know, one of the most common things that I hear that probably all horticulture educators hear that orchids are super tough, and that is true for some of them. But there are about 28,000 species of orchids. They comprise somewhere between six and eleven percent of the world's known flowering plant species, and there's over a 100,000 accepted cultivars according to the Royal Horticultural Society in The UK. So there are, you know, you can never get that many cultivars in one spot, but there is kind of an orchid for everyone.
Jack Schooley: 06:35And some orchid, like I said, some orchids are tough in the home environment, specifically miniature orchids from places like Cloud Forest in Asia or Central And South America. They can be really tricky, really finicky, but there are a lot of fairly easy to grow orchids and more than just the ones that you find in the grocery store. I'd say in terms of misconceptions, there's kind of four big misconceptions that I can think of. One is that orchids need a lot of water. A lot of people think that, you know, you need to you need to drown your orchid, but most really don't need that much, especially the common ones.
Jack Schooley: 07:21Say another misconception is that they're all tropical, which is not true. There's a lot that occur in temperate and arid regions. There's some orchids that are grown more like cacti, and, you know, Illinois has somewhere between thirty and fifty native species of orchids. They occur on every continent except Antarctica. The third misconception is that they all need some special mix.
Jack Schooley: 07:49They all need, like, orchid bark, you need to, like, mix it yourself and have this deep understanding of substrates and and all that kind of stuff, but that's not that's also not true. There's a lot of terrestrial orchids that occur kind of on the forest floor in nature that can be grown in, you know, a normal houseplant mix. And I'd say, like, the last one and one of the more, like, prevalent ones that I hear is that, you know, grocery store orchids or the orchids that you find in big box stores, they're just bred to die. You know, that they they all die after they flower. Like, that's all they're supposed to do.
Jack Schooley: 08:26They want you to get more, and that's not necessarily the case. Like, I I've some of my longest lived orchids have been from floral arrangements and centerpieces and stuff that I pulled out and repotted and have kept flowering for months and living for years. So those are those are some common misconceptions, but I I would consider them misconceptions.
Emily Swihart: 08:51Well, first, I will go back to what you said earlier before the misconceptions. Like, that's so many different flowering plants. Like, I knew it was a big group of plants, but wow. That's that's incredible. So thanks for dropping that information in with us.
Emily Swihart: 09:07But good to good to kinda myth bust of those myth misconceptions, so thanks.
Jack Schooley: 09:14Yeah. Of course.
Chris Enroth: 09:16Especially the soil one. I Mhmm. I mean, my first exposure with Orchids, we were in Southern Illinois. I was a student down there at college, and, everyone's like, well, we have to go to it was the Cedar Creek Park or watersheds, an area down there. And they said, there is a very rare orchid in bloom right now, and he, like, went there.
Chris Enroth: 09:37And we're, like, looking out for water moccasins. We're doing all this stuff, and then we come upon this unassuming plant, I'll say. I'm like, oh, that's it? Like, it is just growing in regular old soil. Like, it's just in regular old forest soil.
Chris Enroth: 09:52But, I mean, it wasn't very showy. It didn't have a very nice place to grow. It's just underneath a bunch of trees. So it's yeah. They they can they they they can be tough.
Chris Enroth: 10:05They they grow in diversified environments, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Jack Schooley: 10:10Yeah. That's definitely true. They're a lot tougher than I think people give them credit for.
Chris Enroth: 10:16Mhmm. Yep. So, I mean, we probably aren't gonna be going out to buy a rare Orchid in from Southern Illinois. But if we're gonna buy our first Orchid, so we we we hear this podcast, we're like, you know what? I wanna get in the Orchid game.
Chris Enroth: 10:35What would you recommend we start with?
Jack Schooley: 10:39So there are four kind of main genre, which, you know, that I would recommend for the beginner kind of orchid enthusiast just getting into the hobby. You know, in the orchid hobby, I guess, the way that orchids are categorized is almost always by their scientific name. So there's a little bit of terminology you should be familiar with when you're going into it. But once you know it, you know it, you'll start seeing the flowers everywhere, and you'll go, oh, yeah. That's that's that one.
Jack Schooley: 11:13But the four main genera that I would go with are Cattleya, Phalaenopsis, Dendrobium, and Oncidium. Those are all fairly easy to grow. They have somewhat similar growing conditions. They tend to tolerate fluctuations in moisture, and they don't necessarily need high humidity. Most of them can be grown in kind of a household, you know, normal relative humidity.
Jack Schooley: 11:44They don't need, like, a humidifier or anything, and many of those cultivars or species in those genera are very large. You know, some of the largest orchid flowers are in the Catlea genus, and a lot of them are very fragrant. There's, you know, ones that smell like chocolate or cherries or just like super sweet floral scents, so there's kind of a lot of bang for your buck if you get one of those. So those tend to be the ones I recommend for for beginners.
Chris Enroth: 12:19Alright. I'm writing these down because, you know, as I said, my mother-in-law, she loves orchids. So I'm gonna surprise her maybe with a couple mail order orchids here. She doesn't listen to the show.
Ken Johnson: 12:31Does she listen to You just ruined it.
Chris Enroth: 12:33No. She doesn't. No.
Ken Johnson: 12:38Delay the release of this one. Alright. So if somebody like Chris is gonna go out and buy one of these Orchids, what should people look for when purchasing an Orchid? And does it is it better to buy one that is blooming or one that is not blooming yet?
Jack Schooley: 12:59So this I'd say, like, this is another one of those, like, very common questions that I get because it's kind of a mystery to folks. You know, orchids seem really different than a lot of other plants, like bedding plants. But in general, you wanna look for healthy looking plants, and that's kind of vague. But you want the leaves to be plump and green. You don't want them to be wrinkly or kind of, you know, weak or something like that.
Jack Schooley: 13:33You also want the leaves to be uniform in color. Some varieties have some kind of mottled leaves or variegation. In that case, like, the color is not gonna be uniform, obviously, but in general, you want them to be kind of uniformly green. You want them to have healthy looking pseudobulbs, though some genera like katleyas have what are called pseudobulbs and they're usually almond or acorn shapes and that's where the leaves are coming out of and they sit on top of the soil. That's kind of a storage organ, it's almost like a tuber on a potato, but you want those to look plump and healthy.
Jack Schooley: 14:16You don't want them to be, like, shriveled up or, you know, look like they're decaying because that's not gonna be a great start to your orchid growing journey. I'd say the best time to buy an orchid is right before they bloom or if they have an inflorescence, which is, you know, the whole flower spike, right when the first couple flowers start to open because orchids can bloom for weeks or months. I've kept Phalaenopsis or a moth orchid blooming for over two and a half months, and that was from a floral arrangement where it was almost fully opened already. But kind of similar to bedding plants or plants that you're using in pots, if you buy orchids right before they bloom, you kinda get the most bang for your buck, I guess, out of buying what can sometimes be pricier plants. You at least get that initial flush.
Jack Schooley: 15:16You get to see how the flowers look before you figure out how you're gonna keep it alive or kind of dial in your your care regimen in case something does go wrong, which I've killed my fair share of Orchids. There's no shame in it. You know, I probably killed more than I can count. It happens to everyone. Don't worry.
Emily Swihart: 15:39Well, I do I will say I do take shame in it because they're so gorgeous, and I feel bad every time. I don't think it it is inevitable seemingly in my house, but I do feel bad every time it happens. So, okay. So we bought our Orchid, and now we've taken it home. And you said that they are not as finicky as maybe we we kinda think they are or assume they are.
Emily Swihart: 16:04But how do we care for it once it is in our home environment? And I guess I'm particularly interested, like, do we have to care for it different than some of our more common house plants? And does this summer versus winter care, like, you know, kind of the the humid season versus not humid seasons in the Midwest. How does that change things for the care of our orchids?
Jack Schooley: 16:30Yeah so some orchids like jewel orchids, there's one it's called Ludisia discolor, another very common easy to grow one. They're terrestrial and can be grown sometimes in the same pot as other houseplants. A lot of my orchids I've kept kind of in the same parts of the house as other house plants. So same lighting conditions, similar humidity, somewhat similar watering as well, kind of once a week or so depending. Most popular genera of orchids, so the ones that I listed earlier, they're considered epiphytes or lithophytes.
Jack Schooley: 17:16So epiphytes are things like Spanish moss that grow on trees. They're not parasites but they kind of grow up in the air with their roots kind of hanging out. Sometimes there's a little bit of substrate or moss or detritus, and then lithophytes grow on, you know, in similar way but on rocks. So things like a lot of air plants grow on rocks. So for a lot of these common genera, they really should be they can be grown right alongside most of your other house plants if they're in kind of that, you know, bright indirect light, which is what most, you know, common houseplants like.
Jack Schooley: 17:54The only difference is they should probably be grown in a specialty orchid mix, which a lot of the ones that are premade at the store are perfectly fine. You don't need to kind of mix it yourself or worry about the ingredients too much. Most of them have the same ingredients in different proportions as long as it's kind of chunky and airy and it allows the roots to dry out in between waterings, you're kind of set. And they do like a little bit of fertilizer to stay blooming. Yeah.
Jack Schooley: 18:27And you but you can use the the same fertilizer you use for your houseplants, just a little bit weaker, kind of a quarter or half strength. And then like a lot of other plants, orchids do go through a dormancy period, and so, you know, a lot of orchids during the warm summer months when it's humid and hot and sunny and the days are long, they're they're gonna be putting on a lot of growth. You'll see new leaves emerge. You might see, like, inflorescences develop. Although, orchids do have different flowering seasons depending on the genus that you grow, and those are the months, you know, the the human months when they're growing actively, those are the months when you kinda wanna step up your your watering and fertilizing.
Jack Schooley: 19:15In the wintertime when they go dormant, they kinda they're almost like a pet rock. You're just you you keep them alive, but they're not gonna do much, so don't expect them to do anything crazy. That's when you can kinda scale back on the watering and reduce the fertilizer, kind of allow them to rest. It's also a good time to repot. You don't necessarily want to repot when they're developing flowers because that can shock them.
Jack Schooley: 19:41But I'd say, like, those are the the biggest differences. It's with the kind of level of fertilizer that you use and the amount that you water.
Emily Swihart: 19:51Could you, I guess, just you said that we could use the same fertilizer as our that is amazing news to me, because I think that contributed to the decline of some of mine is you would have the regular you know, I gotta have general houseplant fertilizer, and I would have Orchid. I just would not get it. And so they would never get fertilized. That might have been a contributing factor. Probably not the only one, but I I appreciate you kinda giving everybody that pass on the specialty fertilizers.
Jack Schooley: 20:25Yeah. There's no I mean, the the orchid fertilizers are there for a reason. Sometimes they can help an orchid kind of induce flowering, but I've had a lot of success, and I'd say a lot of folks that grow a lot of orchids have just as much success growing them using kind of a all purpose twenty twenty twenty fertilizer diluted a little bit. I personally I've never bought orchid fertilizer and I've had a lot of success growing orchids. That's anecdotal.
Jack Schooley: 20:59It's not like a scientific study or anything. But, yeah, that's that's a pretty commonly accepted practice. Well,
Emily Swihart: 21:08but you have living orchids, and I guess the three of us don't. So we'll go ahead and try something new maybe.
Chris Enroth: 21:18Well, I'm I'm learning a lot. First, you should fertilize our house plants, which I I don't do. I I should probably just do that in general first. They don't look great. They don't last long.
Chris Enroth: 21:29That might explain multiple things here. Get on the fertilizer train. So let's talk about some other growing requirements in addition to fertility. The the big one, at least in my household, is watering and humidity. As I said, I've showered with orchids before.
Chris Enroth: 21:49So my mother-in-law says the only way to water an orchid is you have to put ice cubes on it. That's that's that's the only way. They like ice cubes. Now that doesn't sound right in my brain. But, Jack, do orchids like ice cubes?
Chris Enroth: 22:07Is is that their preferred way of being watered?
Jack Schooley: 22:11I you know, for the people listening, they could not see it. Maybe they heard my sigh, but that was a a big eye roll. Absolutely. Do not water your Orchids with ice cubes that, you know, I should have added that to the misconceptions earlier, but, orchids do not like ice. Huge pet peeve of mine.
Jack Schooley: 22:33And I think like a lot of other orchid growers You know, I the way that I that I see it is, like, would you like to take an ice shower forever? For your whole life, would you you know, no more warm showers. Not even lukewarm, but ice cold every single time.
Chris Enroth: 22:51Glacier melt. Yeah.
Jack Schooley: 22:52Yeah. Probably not. It's not super comfortable. Ice cubes so beyond just, you know, the kind of anecdotal or, like, my own personal pet peeve, ice cubes, because the water is so cold, it can can shock or damage tropical roots, and they often don't provide enough water to actually thoroughly water the pot. And orchid roots are very important to the way that they grow.
Jack Schooley: 23:20They're not only providing, like, anchorage in the pot, but orchid roots have special membranes they can actually photosynthesize. You know, they they are a major growth point. So if you shock or you kill the roots or you damage the roots with ice, not a great recipe for success. I'd say the the best thing you can do is just water them with, like, lukewarm water, you know, like, temperature, water, you know, from wherever. That's, you know, that's the temperature it should be.
Jack Schooley: 23:58You know, we're not watering with solid water. We're watering with liquid water. So that's kinda what you wanna look out for.
Chris Enroth: 24:08Well and and you gave us, you know, four good genre examples of maybe where we can start with our orchids that you had said they don't necessarily need a high humidity environment, which hence why the orchids are in my shower because I thought they need a high humidity environment. So what more human place in the house than, like, the bathroom where you're you know, you have, like, five people rotating through taking showers. That didn't work. Actually, it made quite a mess when the kids went in there and knocked all the orchid dirt on the floor, and then they got into the drain. So I don't recommend that practice, at least with clumsy kids.
Jack Schooley: 24:51Yeah. No. I, I will say, there is one orchid. It's called a Pleurophthalus austidiosa. It's a miniature orchid.
Jack Schooley: 25:01The flowers are kinda like two to four millimeters to like maybe a quarter of an inch long. I had grown it for years, had no success, of in ambient humidity. I moved it into the bathroom. It was on the back of the toilet, which fun fact, stuff if you have houseplants in the bathroom, the increased humidity is not really coming from showers. It's coming from your toilet.
Jack Schooley: 25:26Oh. Yeah. Because that's the only pool of water that's just standing there all the time. But when I moved it into the bathroom, which had a big skylight, you know, was living in an old building in the city, so it was I think it was like a warehouse at some point. There was this, like, leaded glass.
Jack Schooley: 25:45That's when it finally bloomed for me. It had been growing and growing and doing great. You know? It was putting out new leaves and everything, but it was only once I moved it into the bathroom. So that one is kind of a specialty orchid.
Jack Schooley: 25:57It it definitely liked the the higher humidity, but most of the ones that I've talked about up to this point, most of the ones that we've been talking about, perfectly fine in, like, kind of a 50 to 80% relative humidity situation, which is right around what most people's homes are kept at. You know, homes typically range from kind of 35 to 60 or 70%, depends on if you have, like, central air or something like that, But the genera that we've talked about, most of them are gonna be fine with ambient humidity or if you don't want to invest in a humidifier or something like that, grouping them with other plants, either other orchids or house plants or something like that can kind of create a little microclimate where there's a small localized area of slightly increased humidity. But bathroom sounds like it can be risky. If you don't wanna have orchids in your bathroom, you can always try humidity tray. So just kind of a tray with pebbles, like pea gravel that you top off with water every once in a while that releases humidity.
Jack Schooley: 27:11But don't miss the leaves. That was, you know, when whenever I hear people talk about humidity in orchids, miss my orchid every day. Like, you're really misting the fungus on the surface of the leaves. Like, it's not a great idea because as soon as that, mist evaporates, that humidity is gone. So if you're concerned about humidity, try humidity tray.
Jack Schooley: 27:41I've used humidity trays, humidifiers, just like ones you can get at the drugstore. Both work, but most of the ones that we're talking about today are fine with, you know, normal kind of household humidity levels.
Chris Enroth: 27:57Okay. And you talked about that bright indirect light, which, again, if if anyone and you know who you are. If you're listening to this, you've shown off your incredible south facing windows. I'm looking at your soul right now. I'm making fun of me and my lack of good lighting for house plants and orchids.
Chris Enroth: 28:19There's there's another listener. They know who they are. Maybe if we have good bright light indirect light, what about location? I mean, what about heat vents, drafts, temperature, anything like that we need to be careful of?
Jack Schooley: 28:39Yeah. You know, most orchids, you know, they they actually so they do well in most locations kind of, like, depending on the what direction your windows are facing. The one direction where it can get tricky is north facing. There's You not a ton of light. There's a few orchids that can tolerate that low low light level, but most of them are gonna want either east, west, or south facing windows.
Jack Schooley: 29:06If they're in a west facing window or south facing window, you want to be careful that they don't get burned, so like a sheer curtain or something like that. You know, in a lot of people's homes, kind of your air vents tend to be close to the edge of the room, they're usually not right in the middle of your floor, so when you have your Orchid close to the window, you want to make sure that it's not getting blasted with that air, whether it's from like an AC unit or central air or heat or radiators in the wintertime, you know, drafts and kind of, like, hot hot, dry air or, you know, that super cold air, that can be a big problem for orchids. It kind of shocks their system. It can create a great environment for fungal pests and bacterial infections and and all that kind of stuff. So even though they like air movement, they don't wanna be placed right next to kind of an air vent or a radiator or something like that.
Jack Schooley: 30:14They like they're from, you know, most of the ones that we're talking about, they're from tropical environments where the temperature and humidity tends to stay pretty consistent, you know, most of the time. It's not, you know, a ton of the time that they're getting some icy breeze in Ecuador or something like that. So just something to keep in mind.
Ken Johnson: 30:40Alright. So say we have successfully grown our our orchids here a few years down the line, and our plants gotten too big for the pots, like the repotting process. Usually, at least the orchids I've seen for sale, they're always in clear pots. Do they do they need to be in clear pots, or what are we looking for when we're repotting a plant?
Jack Schooley: 31:00So I have grown orchids both ways. I've grown them in the super fancy kind of, like, specialty orchid pots that are, like, ceramic baskets, essentially. And I've also grown them in clear pots like the nursery pots that they're they're grown in. I've had success both ways. It's not totally necessary to repot your orchid into a clear pot if it needs repotting.
Jack Schooley: 31:27There are certain advantages to a clear pot. You know, we've all seen orchids where the roots are kind of growing out of the pot or they're growing around things or kind of like hugging the pot. It's a lot easier to either cut off a clear plastic pot or kind of pop the orchid out of the pot that way than it is with something that's ceramic or terracotta where the roots tend to attach pretty tightly to the surface of the pot. Because if you tear those roots, they don't kind of regenerate or regrow like a lot of our herbaceous plants kind of outside. Once that root is broken it's kind of damaged forever and it impacts the ability for that root to take up water and nutrients and all that kind of stuff.
Jack Schooley: 32:18Clear pots also allow you to check the health of the roots. I mentioned earlier that roots are very important, that they can even photosynthesize, and so if you have a clear pot and you water your orchid, you'll see the roots turn from kind of a white color or sometimes it's like a dusty gray to green. That's because there's, you know, special layer of cells on the surface of the root that are really good at capturing moisture specifically from the air so when you water them and they get saturated that that color changes. So you can tell when an orchid is hydrated. You can tell if there's things like root rot going on, but I have had success growing them both ways.
Jack Schooley: 33:01It's not, like, a 100% mandatory to go out and find, you know, clear nursery pots. If you have some kind of ceramic pot, as long as it's got good drainage and, you know, decent airflow, it should probably be okay.
Ken Johnson: 33:19So if your Orchids in a clear pot and you start seeing those roots circling quite a bit, is that, like, other plants, an indication needs to be repotted?
Jack Schooley: 33:28Yeah. That's definitely an indication. I'd say the bigger indication because if those roots start circling, they'll just put out aerial roots. And sometimes you can even lose a pot in a in a mass of roots, and at that point, you're just like, it's, you know, with the plant gods now. There's there's no way you're getting that pot back.
Jack Schooley: 33:51The bigger sign that something needs to be repotted is if you see the growing medium start to break down. So Orchid Mix is usually made of kind of like a fir bark chip, very similar to like a lot of commercially available mulches. I've actually used bags of mulch when I had a large collection of orchids. I would just buy small chip fir bark mulch, no dyes or anything like that, and that would be the base of my orchid mix. So you don't actually need, like, a very expensive, you know, bag of orchid mix.
Jack Schooley: 34:26But when that bark starts to break down and it starts to look more like soil instead of individual pieces of bark, that's the sign to repot your orchid. Because at that point, it is acting more like soil. It's not allowing water to drain freely, and that could lead to other issues down the line.
Emily Swihart: 34:48I'm learning a lot today about I had the specialty mix too, so I I gave them all my money for my Orchids. That's okay. Okay. So one of the most common questions, complaints, you know, frustrations that we hear surrounding, you know, the topic of orchids is that they bloom once, and then we cannot get them to rebloom. Do you have any advice, tips, like, please?
Jack Schooley: 35:18Yes. I hear that one a lot. It's very, very common. Nobody likes a, you know, a flowering plant that does not flower, But there's a few main reasons why orchids tend not to rebloom. So one of them could be, like, an improper watering kind of schedule or an unhealthy root system.
Jack Schooley: 35:44So if they're getting too much water or not enough water or if there's things like root rot happening inside the pot that's preventing the plant from taking up water and nutrients, it's stressed out. It's not gonna flower. Another reason is a lack of temperature shift. So I know I said most orchids like things fairly consistent, which is true, but there are some types of orchids like Phalaenopsis, so like the moth orchids. A lot of times for them, a temperature drop at night of around 10 degrees actually signals flowering in the plant.
Jack Schooley: 36:27And so it's not totally necessary. You know, I've gotten orchids to rebloom without a temperature shift, but that is one thing that could be contributing to that. Another one is, like, a lack of light. You know, we talk about bright indirect light. We talk about, like, different facing windows and and stuff like that.
Jack Schooley: 36:49If your Orchid is kind of, like, in your windowless dining room or something like that as the centerpiece on your table, it's probably not liking the incandescent bulb that's hanging above it. It it wants more natural light to be able to, like, photosynthesize and make sugars and actually generate energy to flour. Another one and this is one that's, like, kind of easy to forget about is that flowering takes a lot of energy for orchids, and so a lot of orchids actually go into a period of dormancy after a bloom. So, like, they're not going to bloom all the time year round. Orchids are seasonal flowers just like every other flower we have.
Jack Schooley: 37:33Different orchids bloom at different times of year. And so after they flower, a lot of times they'll enter a period of dormancy that can be months. Sometimes it can be up to a year. But it's just something to keep in mind. Patience is a virtue even with flowers.
Jack Schooley: 37:52But if you want your orchid to rebloom, you could check the roots and repot if necessary right after a bloom. It's not necessarily putting out a new inflorescence. That's a good time to do something that might be stressful, like repotting and kind of, like, checking the roots, removing any damage or anything like that. You also wanna check your cultural conditions. So I know we talked about water.
Jack Schooley: 38:17We talked about light, humidity, fertilizer, all that kind of stuff. You wanna wanna check those things because if the cultural conditions aren't correct and if the orchid is not getting fertilized, it's just kind of sitting there. You know? Orchid bark, orchid mix does not have a ton of nutrients in it. It's kind of like you drinking water instead of eating food.
Jack Schooley: 38:44Like, yes, it works for a little bit, but eventually, it's not gonna not gonna go so well. So you wanna make sure that you're feeding your orchid with the right mix, that the humidity is right, the water is right, the light's correct. At that point, you should have success. If you don't, there might be something else going on that's kind of, like, hidden behind the scenes, but that's a lot more species dependent when it comes to orchids. Are any of them daylight, sensitive, like day length?
Jack Schooley: 39:20Do we need to pay attention to that at all? You know, I know in large orchid growing operations, sometimes they can control day length. Mhmm. I think for most tropical species of orchids, which includes the ones that we've talked about today, day length isn't as important. You know, the day length at the equator, close to the equator, is right around twelve hours most of the year.
Jack Schooley: 39:50And so for those tropical species, they're not as concerned with day length. A lot of times, it comes down to humidity because there are dry and wet seasons or temperature because they do have seasonal fluctuations with that kind of dry, wet cycle.
Emily Swihart: 40:12I think probably the patience is a necessary reminder for this conversation. They don't they you know, when I was having success, it would take a long time, and it would just surprise me. It's like when it was set, it was probably just that energy, you know, has been replenished, and the plant feels like it can invest energy into a bloom. And I know, like, my mom would make comments sometimes about you just to that effect of, like, it's taken forever. Like, I thought it was dead or, you know not dead.
Emily Swihart: 40:43Just not it wasn't blooming. And so patience patience is a good takeaway message.
Jack Schooley: 40:49Yeah. If you can keep the plant alive even if it's not blooming, At least you know kind of your watering is working, you know, the the mix is correct, and then you can start playing with other factors like light. You know, I have an orchid. It's a jewel orchid. It's a Ludisia discolor, and it blooms reliably every December into January.
Jack Schooley: 41:14And, you know, it used to bloom when I had it in a really bright window still. It would be masses of blooms. I tried moving it one year to a different location that didn't get quite as much light because they can tolerate low light conditions. And all of a sudden, I get, like, three wimpy flowers. I'm like, well, that's disappointing because I knew that the cultural condition conditions were correct.
Jack Schooley: 41:43It's just I changed that light level, and that year's blooms were not spectacular. They were a little underwhelming, and so I knew exactly what I did, but it's just one of those things. You kinda you play around with Orchids, you start to figure out what works for you because we talk about these rules and, like, relative humidity and light and all that kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, it really comes down to your own growing conditions in your home, and there's nothing we can we can do about that. It's just if you are committed, you know, you'll you'll accept the fact that you're gonna kill some along the way, but eventually, you'll keep more alive than you kill. And I think that's the sign of a successful hobbyist is when that that ratio starts to change a little bit.
Chris Enroth: 42:33I all homes should have greenhouses. That's what I think. But, you know, I might be in the minority on that one. Maybe not here, though. Well so, Jack, you you figured something out for me.
Chris Enroth: 42:48So my mother-in-law, she had a moth orchid, and she lived in this place that had a bay window facing west. And there was a curtain that she would draw at nighttime that would kinda separate it from the rest of the house and would always get cooler in that bay window. And that thing rebloom spectacularly. So there you go. You you just gotta have the right spot in your house.
Chris Enroth: 43:12So you gotta find
Jack Schooley: 43:13There you go.
Chris Enroth: 43:14Interesting. Okay. Well, let's let's go down this list real quick of, like, common orchid growing problems. These are things that people might call you up because we're totally gonna leave your email here in the show notes. I'll send you an email.
Chris Enroth: 43:28So let's go down this list real quick, and maybe we can answer them for them ahead of time. So first thing is my orchid has yellow leaves. What could be the possible problem?
Jack Schooley: 43:38So there's that's a very vague kind of ailment. There's a lot of different things that could be going on. It could be root rot. It could be some kind of infection or something like that. It could be stress from too much light.
Jack Schooley: 43:54The most common, you know, thing that causes yellow leaves is age. You know, orchids grow continuously, and so if an orchid has a pseudobulb like a cattleya, it'll put out a new pseudobulb, and it's kind of like an iris. Like, the back end of the plant kind of withers away. It starts to not look so hot because the growing edge is at that front end of the plant. For things like a moth orchid or, you know, phalaenopsis, they're constantly putting out new leaves in that in that fan shape.
Jack Schooley: 44:28And so those bottom leaves, naturally, they're gonna turn yellow. They'll probably shrivel up, and they'll fall off. That's a natural process. All orchids do it. It does freak people out.
Jack Schooley: 44:40It can look very dramatic, but it happens. And most of the time, it's it's probably age, maybe light. That's another one. If there's if they're getting too much light, the leaves start to kind of bleach out. They look yellow, and then they'll look white, and then they'll look dead.
Jack Schooley: 45:02So just something to keep in mind. But, yeah, most of the time, it's age. Not something to really be concerned about.
Chris Enroth: 45:11What about that wrinkly texture that you could see on, like, the leaves and the roots? What's what's that? What's going on there?
Jack Schooley: 45:19So that wrinkly texture is caused because it's not getting enough water. The interesting thing, you know, this is not news to, you know, anybody here, but if a plant is not getting enough water, there's actually two causes. You know, it's either getting underwatered, so it's literally not getting enough water. So it's pulling water from the tissues to try and keep itself alive, or it's actually getting overwatered. And so you've started to rot out the roots, at which point can't take up any moisture.
Jack Schooley: 45:53You know, it presents similarly. Sometimes the only way to figure it out is popping your orchid out of the pot and actually looking at the roots. If they're brown and squishy, it's been overwatered. That's root rot. You gotta remove it at that point.
Jack Schooley: 46:07If they're really dry, it's being underwatered, you can kind of rescue it by soaking it once a week and for twenty to thirty minutes in, like, that lukewarm water kind of fertilizer solution because that'll really help saturate the roots. But wrinkly leaves, wrinkly roots, that's just because of a watering issue.
Chris Enroth: 46:31Definitely seen that when the ice cube method has been employed, so alright. Answering so many questions today. How about pests? Say we have, like, a scale or mealybug that we find on our orchid. What do we do?
Jack Schooley: 46:47So there's, you know, a ton of research on this. A lot of extension websites have really great information on this, but there are a couple of methods you can use. You can start by physically removing the pests. So if it's something like scale or mealybugs, usually, you can see it with your naked eye, and you can just crush them with q tips and kind of get that residue off of the plant, or you can, you know, pick them off even with tweezers if you're so inclined. It can be a little tedious.
Jack Schooley: 47:22So a lot of time a lot of the time, things like insecticidal soap or horticultural oil are both safe for orchids and effective against those pests. They're usually OMRI list a lot of them are OMRI listed, organic. Most of them are kind of safe for use in home environments or there's formulations that are safe for use. If you go that route, I would recommend kind of using it alongside the q tip method of crushing the insects because you're coming at them from a couple different directions. Used to be recommended to soak the q tip in rubbing alcohol because it actually removes the cuticle, the kind of waxy layer on those insects and dries them out.
Jack Schooley: 48:12They have since found out that it also removes the waxy layer off the leaves of your orchids which can make things worse. So use that one kind of that's like the nuclear option. You know, if it's really, really bad, I've definitely filled, like, a spray bottle with rubbing alcohol and diluted it and sprayed it on my orchids. It does get rid of everything, but then your plants, you know, they can be a little bit more prone to other problems. You know, the There are systemic insecticides, so ones that the plants take up and they store in their tissues, very effective, but they're also fairly toxic.
Jack Schooley: 48:54The biggest thing with infected orchids, because they are pretty tough, an infection has to get pretty bad with mealy bugs or scale before an orchid goes to the big greenhouse in the sky, you want to isolate your plants. So infected plants, if you have a collection, remove that plant from the collection, put it somewhere else. That'll help keep the mealybugs or the scale insects from spreading onto your other plants. And then kind of the the new option, I guess, this is one that's kind of grown in popularity since I've started growing orchids. You see it a lot now or homeowners actually purchasing beneficial insects.
Jack Schooley: 49:40So if you ever go to nurseries or greenhouses, botanic gardens, stuff like that, a A lot of the times they use they've used beneficial insects for a long time. These are, you know, the good guys that crawl around on your plants and kinda eat the the mealy bugs and the scale. Some people are not a huge fan of releasing, you know, potentially thousands of beneficial insects in their home. Most of the time, I will say, you don't see them, and they you're they're not gonna, you know, get into your kitchen or, you know, into your food. They're not interested in that.
Jack Schooley: 50:20But that kind of biocontrol is very effective. You do have to kind of reapply, and you can buy them from companies now. They're pretty easy to mail order, and you just kinda hang the tag on your plant, and the the beneficial insects kinda do their thing. And it's less work for you if you have a big collection, but you also have, you know, a few thousand new friends crawling around your collection as well. So just something to keep in mind.
Chris Enroth: 50:52Settle down, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 50:53Do it.
Chris Enroth: 51:00Well, so, Jack, you you you have diagnosed multiple issues with with orchids over your lifetime. I mean, do you have a a common reason you see that orchids fail to thrive long term? Is it just our lack of patience?
Jack Schooley: 51:18I think a lot of times, you know, the most common reason is probably watering, which comes from a variety of places. You know, it's the misconception that these are tropical plants. They need a ton of water. It's also the misconception that ice is good for watering orchids since I see that all the time. You know, that's probably the biggest myth when it comes to growing orchids is that, you know, ice works.
Jack Schooley: 51:51And so whether it's overwatering or underwatering, kind of dialing in that correct level of water is, you know, the most important thing when it when it comes to growing Orchids, similar to a lot of other, you know, house plants. You know, growing cacti and succulents indoors, you know, overwatering tends to be the number one killer. Probably, I would I would, you know, put money on that being the number one killer of orchids inside as well. Root rot and crown rot, which is, you know, like, root rot except on the on the top of the plant because both of those can be kinda somewhat catastrophic for orchids.
Ken Johnson: 52:32Alright. Wrap things up here. So because if people remember nothing else from this podcast, I guess, are your your top three Orchids growing tips here? TLDR or TR to t l d l. Too long didn't listen.
Ken Johnson: 52:49What what should people take away?
Jack Schooley: 52:52I'd say my number one tip, and this goes for almost any plant, is right plant, right place. You know, there's 28,000 species of orchids. There's a 100,000 over a 100,000 cultivars. There's that's way too many, you know, care sheets. You're not gonna memorize all that information.
Jack Schooley: 53:10So if you ever find yourself doubting how to take care of it, just type in the name of your orchid in nature into your favorite search engine and look at how it grows. That'll give you a lot of insight as to how to grow it in your home environment, and that's something that I've done for a long time. It's never steered me wrong. That's how it wants to grow. You just have to kind of figure out how to do it at home, and that's different for everybody.
Jack Schooley: 53:39My second big tip is airflow. Orchids growing in stagnant air are much more prone to pests and diseases. You still want to avoid drafts, like I mentioned earlier, but, like, little desktop fans, like, you have a little greenhouse or, you know, some people have the bariums or, you know, that kind of stuff. Even, like, computer fans can work just as well to kinda move that air around. It kind of keeps things you know, breaks that surface tension of air on the leaves and can help improve the flowering and performance of your orchids.
Jack Schooley: 54:24And then the third one, and this maybe this also this one also applies to to everyone on the call today is try different kinds of orchids. You know, there are you know, I I've been growing orchids for fifteen, sixteen years, and I still see orchids that I have never seen before. And I've spent a lot of time looking at visiting orchid nurseries, visiting, you know, some of the largest collections in The US, you know, seeing orchids around the world and and stuff like that, and I still am surprised by the diversity of orchids out there. So just because you killed one does not mean that you will kill them all. There is probably an orchid for just about everyone.
Jack Schooley: 55:18You kinda just have to find it. And a little bit of research ahead of time can help you do that without killing so many of them. You know, it gets a little discouraging after a while, but you will find the right one for you. You know, we talked about some easy ones. Another one that I've mentioned a couple of times is jewel orchids that Ludisia discolor.
Jack Schooley: 55:43If you have other house plants, try that one. It grows in normal house plant soil. You don't need to get any specialty mix. You don't need an orchid pot. You can grow it in plastic.
Jack Schooley: 55:55You can grow it in terracotta. It tolerates, you know, drying out. It tolerates low light levels. It tolerates some kind of benign neglect, you could say, and it'll bloom every winter. Super easy to propagate as well if you wanna try your hand at at making more orchids and gifting them to your friends who maybe are not so successful.
Jack Schooley: 56:17But there is an orchid for everyone. You just gotta find it.
Chris Enroth: 56:22Excellent. I don't know what else that the cherry on top. Perfect.
Emily Swihart: 56:27Yes.
Chris Enroth: 56:28Oh, yeah. Well, that was a lot of great information about orchids. I I learned so much. My head is is just, like, buzzing right now. I really want to go get me some orchids.
Chris Enroth: 56:41I'll use the excuse. It's from my mother-in-law, but I know who's really gonna take care of them. Alright. Well, the Good Growing podcast, a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by Ken Johnson. Jack, thanks so much for joining us and talking about Orchids and, I mean, giving us a really good, just like foundational knowledge that then that we can use to go build upon.
Chris Enroth: 57:05So thank you very much.
Jack Schooley: 57:07You're very welcome.
Chris Enroth: 57:10And Emily, thank you for joining us as always every single week.
Emily Swihart: 57:14My pleasure. And yes, Jack, thank you so much. Like, that was so encouraging and enlightening. I have a lot of notes, and I think maybe I've identified my Orchids issue, which is me. So I will have to try again.
Emily Swihart: 57:27And I think I'm better equipped.
Chris Enroth: 57:33And Ken, thank you again as always for talking about Orchids with us today.
Ken Johnson: 57:38Yes. Thank you, Jack. I've I've got some work to do. We'll leave it at that. Chris, Emily, thank you as always, and let's do this again next week.
Chris Enroth: 57:49Oh, we shall do this again next week. The horticultural hijinks will continue as we start to, dare I say it, getting close to the end of summer. Oh, no. No. Don't don't not yet.
Chris Enroth: 58:01Not yet. Ken, turn the Christmas music off. Come on. Hold on. Oh, and if you're longtime listeners, know he never does turn that Christmas music off.
Chris Enroth: 58:10Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, that is listening. Or if you watch this on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.
Jack Schooley: 58:27University of Illinois Extension.