Some Notes about Phalaenopsis Orchids.

I like orchids, I love them, and the more I learn about them, the more I want to know about them. I'm not even prejudiced when it comes to what orchids I like. Right now, in my back yard, I'm creating a little bit of an orchid area. I'm slowly converting an old playhouse into an orchid greenhouse. This project is long running. I've been working on this conversion for over a year now. Let me tell you about the plants that live there.
Right now, I have three four Phalaenopsis orchids. This will be about the first two I got.
This one I gave to my wife for her birthday 2015, the blooms were a light green. It set a spike in 2016, but didn't bloom, so I cut the spike to allow the plant a year to rest and grow nice big healthy leaves. Of course, I then tried to kill it by setting it out in the sun too long one day, and one of the leaves got sunburned and fell off! There was also some damage done to another one of the leaves by a kid, so I cut that section off.


An earlier spike was killed while just barely budded out due to kid injury. Fortunately, it set a second spike. We didn't have green flowers in time for my wife's birthday, but there's a bloom now!

 I can't wait to see how the flowers on the rest of the spike turn out.

 In this picture, you can see more of the overall green tones of the flowers. That's one of the reasons why I chose to buy this orchid for my wife, the "Kelly green" factor :-)






Then there's the $2 big box store clearance special. I paid two bucks for this baby, and it was in horrid shape. The mix it was planted in was horrible, the leaves were really floppy and puckered, and the roots were rotted except for one. Truly a project plant! I decided to give raising it a shot though, so I changed mix, trimmed off the decayed roots gave it a good soak, and held on tight. It didn't take long to set new roots, and a new leaf. I was really surprised to see it even set off a couple of spikes in the winter. When spring arrived the spikes budded out and made flowers.


Totally worth the $2 and time I put into it.

 This is from April 2016. It's been a long row to hoe with this plant, but as it grows, I like the simple flowers it produces more and more.

Phalaenopsis in profile

These last couple of pictures are from this year! The blooms look wonderful.

It just keeps on giving too! This spike is starting to show some great flowers, even though the leaves got sunburned like the last one, the blooms look very good to me.

The two that started this round of orchid collecting for me, in bloom at the same time!

I have two more I need to get some good pictures of. One is a mini phal I got for our wedding anniversary, and the other came from my parents on their visit last August.