Time for orchids to move outside

It is warm! Time for orchids to bask in the sun. The cymbidiums spend the winter in the basement grow room. But, running 800 watts of lighting 16 hours a day is a bit pricy. So, it is high time that we took advantage of the free photons on the deck. Here is the collection. Some of the blooms are starting to fade, but overall, they still look great!



Here is a tighter shot. Can you hear them saying "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up"?



There is activity in the living room. In particular, the Paphiopedilum rothschildianum has decided to put up a spike. I also have a Paphiopedilum Maudie which has two spikes, but neither is open for viewing yet.

The Cymbidiums are starting to pop.

As the title indicates, I have some Cymbidiums that are starting to bloom. Here is the first. I was given this plant as a "back bulb", meaning that it had no roots, no leaves, no nuthin'. I put it in a pot of LECA (lightweight expanded clay aggregate), and after several months it decided to start growing. It has been three or so years from that point to today. The plant summers on my deck, under a burlap awing, to avoid burning the foliage. Once temperatures drop to around 40 F outside, it moves into the basement under an 800 watt high intensity light fixture with both metal halide (MH) and high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps.

I've had a lot of trouble with bud-blast, where the buds turn yellow and drop off without opening. My current theory is that I have been keeping the plants too wet, causing the buds to start to rot while still "in sheath". I've been able to save some, by quickly removing the bad ones, and dusting the cut with copper sulphate fungicide.

I was able to save four blooms on this plant, three of which have opened fully, and one which is still thinking about it.

Here are the three sisters. They grew in a very symmetrical and pretty arrangement:


Here is a close-up of the central bloom, illuminated rather moodily by an LED flashlight, of all things:

Replate or not?

I was wondering whether replating was the right idea. I replated some of the orchid babies, and for a time, it seemed like the ones I left alone were doing a bit better. However, the tide has turned. Here, at the same scale, is a plant that was not replated, versus one that was. The replated plant is doing much better than the other.

Here is the one left on the mother media:


And here is the replated one. As you can see, it is much larger:


According to the manufacturer, the replate media has fertilizer components at about 2x that of the mother media. And the replate media adds powdered banana as well. Clearly, the orchids like the richer media. Lesson learned. I've transplanted the remaining babies onto replate media. We're going to have lots of very healthy orchids, at this rate.

We have roots!

The replated orchids are starting to make roots. In this first photo, you can see a root sticking up in the air. The leaves are somewhat coated with some of the replate "jelly". I may not have gotten the pH quite right, because the replate medium was much softer than the original mother medium. Or, it may be that the mother medium is deliberately firmer to make it easy to remove the protocorms when the time comes. And I guess you would want the replate medium to be softer so that the roots can penetrate. Regardless, the plants look healthy and happy.



In the next photo, you can see two roots coming off level with the medium. Since the flasks are pretty much at 100% humidity inside, there is no need for the roots to dig deep in search of moisture. Still, I expect that the roots will turn down as they lengthen. This medium has activated charcoal to absorb waste products of the orchid metabolism. So, it will be hard to see the roots as they go deeper, at least until they reach the bottom of the flask. :-)



In the final photo, you can see a root with white velamen covering the part of the root closest to the plant. The growing tip of the root is green. The velamen acts as a sponge to absorb water so that it can be consumed by the plant.

The first leaves have appeared!

Well, my baby orchids have been busy. In general, the protocorms have gotten significantly larger. Some have even gotten their first leaves. In this first photo, you can see one nice leaf a little right and up from center. A few other protocorms in this picture show a little green spike on top, which will become their first leaf in a week or two.

Also interesting are the white protocorms in the lower right of the photo. These were clearly alive at one time, because they are much larger than the seeds I initially planted. However, this jar is the "mother flask", and I removed a number of the protocorms to "replate flasks". I must have dripped a drop of the calcium hypochlorite sanitizer into the mother flask, and it apparently killed these few protocorms. Notice that while they turned white, they did not rot or decompose in any way. That is because there is no fungus or bacteria in the flask, so there is nothing to consume the corpses.

Ordinarily, I might have transferred all the protocorms from the mother flask to the replate flasks, but I had too many protocorms, and I am a little unsure of my technique, since this is my first attempt at flasking. So, I decided to thin out the mother flask, and keep it going, just in case.


In the next photo you can see the contents of a replate flask. Ideally, I should have separated each protocorm, and spaced them a little bit apart. However, I was afraid of handling them too much, because of the risk of contamination, so I instead put little clumps of protocorms spaced apart. They'll just have to work it out for themselves. The big protocorm on the left is getting ready to put out its first leaf. The plants in the mother flask seem to be further along. I don't know if I replated too soon, or if the plants are not crazy about the replate medium, or if this is just normal, persnickety orchid behavior. But they are green and growing, so they cannot be too unhappy.


In this last picture, you can see the result of an interesting experiment. As I said above, I had more protocorms than I needed. So, what the heck... Do you suppose they might be willing to live in some nice sphagnum moss? I really didn't think they would survive. If you look back to my previous post, you can see how tiny they were - just little green dots smaller than the head of a pin.

But live they did. I dampened the sphagnum with deionized water, with some KLN rooting hormone, sprinkled on the protocorms, covered the pot loosely with plastic wrap, and crossed my fingers. Maybe twice a week, I've been spraying them with deionized water with a tiny bit of MSU fertilizer added, and sure enough, they are growing well.

In the center of the photo, you can see one nice leaf. I guess my fluorescent lights are a little too strong, because the leave has a tinge of purple. But that doesn't seem to be a problem. Also, in the upper right, you can clearly se the faintest beginnings of a leaf on that protocorm.

So as I had hoped, life wants to live.

The little orchids continue to grow. Today I decided to "replate" the protocorms. They originally started in a sealed jar containing a germinating medium. This medium has a fairly low level of nutrients, and the idea is to move the developing plants to something a little stronger when they are able to tolerate it.

Also, because the jar was sealed, eventually the air in the jar would become too unbalanced for the plants to survive. The new jars have a lid with an 1/8" hole. The hole is plugged with cotton, and the cotton is saturated with copper sulfate. This should be sufficiently germicidal to keep the interior of the jars sterile. We shall see.

One last reason to do the replate: as the protocorms grow, the jar becomes too crowded. Even though I thought I started with a reasonable amount of seed, I had way more seeds germinate than could continue to grow in a single jar.

So, I once again set up a fish tank on its side, sprayed calcium hypochlorite, and moved the protocorms to the new media. Even after spreading the protocorms over 5 jars, I had a bunch left over. So, here are a few photos of the protocorms. Sorry to say that they don't look like much at this stage.

However, they are photographed on a piece of tissue, so you can get an idea of how small they are by how magnified the tissue looks.

A few years ago, I started testing my orchids for viruses. One phal tested positive, so I decided to try setting seed, because I've read that viruses are not transmitted via mature seeds.

So now I have orchid seeds, and a bunch of chemicals to germinate them. And so, here are a few thousand of my new orchids.

This first photo shows some of the smallest orchid plants you will ever see. The round green ones are embryos that have just germinated. The white ones are seeds that did not, for one reason or another, survive.


These seeds are growing on a sterile agar medium. I mixed up the medium, and put it in a pressure cooker for 1/2 hour to sterilize. The seed surfaces also have to be sterilized, to remove fungus and bacteria on the exterior of the seeds, but without killing the seeds themselves.

This is done by soaking the seeds in calcium hypochlorite. The seeds then must be rinsed in sterile water. This is tricky, because they are much smaller and lighter than grains of sand.

The seeds are then added to the sterile agar, without re-contaminating anything. I did this in a fish-tank turned on its side, liberally sprayed with more of the calcium hypochlorite. My work bench was covered with industrial polyethylene - also liberally sprayed. And yes, the basement reeked of chlorine for a little while.

This next photo shows the mason jars containing the seeds and agar. You obviously cannot see the seeds at this scale. I did a total of four jars. Two grew something altogether unlike orchids. Maintaining perfect sterility is hard...


And lastly, this photo shows a few of the trendy new chemicals I bought to make up the agar. I've spared you pictures of the beakers, flasks, hypodermics, etc. used in the process.


After the embryos spend a month or two in these jars, they will become "protocorms". These must then be thinned out, and transferred to fresh sterile "replate medium".

Several months after that, they should have actual roots and leaves, and should be strong enough to be grown in regular pots, in the open. At least, that is the plan...

Practical microbiology. Fun, fun, fun.