Presenting your Orchids
Whenever you have a nice orchid flower, you may want to share its charm and beauty with your family, your friends and/or other orchid growers. You may want to take it to an Orchid Society meeting or bring it for a show display. In all cases, you want your treasure to look its best. After all, not many of us go out among friends (or strangers) in our dirty and possibly torn work clothes.
Here are a few tips how to make your plants and flowers look more presentable:
- While a Phalaenopsis, Oncidium and Cattleya inflorescence (or others with multiple flowers per stem) is growing, start staking the flower stems carefully and gently. You don’t want to make the stems grow stiffly upwards (although some orchids prefer to grow that way). You only want to bring the buds and flowers up from between the leaves for better viewing. A gently curving arch usually looks good. A basic suggestion is to have a stem grow vertical until the first flowers start, and then allow it to bend slightly. I like to leave Paphiopedilums alone until the day before showing. You may want to insert the supporting stake earlier but only tie up the flowers closely behind the ovary on the day you want to show them, so that they look straight at the viewer. Staking a plant for security during transport is different but these supports should be removed for display purposes.
- Try to use unobtrusive looking stakes and ties and don’t let the them stick out or hang down to interfere with the flowers.
- Each single flower stem (inflorescence) gets a separate stake (Lycaste or Paphiopedilum for instance.).
- During the growth of the flower spike, do not turn the plant around but ensure that the light is always coming from the same direction. This keeps the inflorescence growing straight and won’t twist the buds.
- Clean the whole plant by gently washing the leaves (tops and bottoms), pseudobulbs and stems with warm soapy or detergent lukewarm water, and then rinse them with clear lukewarm water. At this time, you may be able to notice any little bugs and get rid of them. Do not get the flowers wet and dry out the leaf crowns (of Phalaenopsis mostly) by wiping them with some soft tissue paper.
- It is not advisable to use plant shine products. Some growers wipe the tops of the leaves with milk to give them a soft shine.
- Never spray the flowers with chemicals or even water, especially before showing, that treatment will damage the floral tissue.
- Clean the pot as thoroughly as possible. It looks better when you can place the whole plant with its growing-pot inside a decorative container – make sure the container does not overpower the orchid.
- Pull out all weeds that may have been growing in the pot.
- Wash the label and make sure it is legible.
- Put a label with your name discreetly somewhere inside the pot.
- Remove all old flowers, all brown and yellow leaves and remove old, unproductive canes. You can even trim black or brown tips carefully with a sterile pair of scissors, trying to keep to the normal shape of the leaf.
- It is a little risky to move freshly potted plants; they may not be securely settled into their new pots and have a tendency to fall over.
- If you notice many black or whitish streaks on the leaves, especially the younger ones, better keep the plant away from others – it may be sick.
- For AOS judging, at least one third of the flowers on a plant should be open.
- Also for AOS judging, you must not completely remove flowers (even older ones). If they look aged, carefully cut the old flowers off (with a sterile tool) and place them on the growing mix, next to the plant. This will let the judges know that there was nothing wrong with the flower, excepting age…
Please, do remember that many people have never even seen an orchid flower close up, never mind having grown one. So don’t be shy and do bring your flowering, nicely groomed plants for our show tables, enter them in a show and be proud of your own, very special orchid.
Ingrid Schmidt-Ostrander - Canadian Orchid Congress