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You start researching information about how to care for a specific orchid, for example, this one or this one
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And you get online and then they have an awesome guide about how to care for that orchid
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Here, the information, this is the humidity, this is the temperature, how much you're going to need to fertilize, when
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And you just print that all out and then say, oh, I forgot to see this one other detail about it
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Let me go back and find that on another site. And when you get on the second side, the information is totally different
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Now, what do you do about conflicting information and how to care for your orchids, specifically in your environment
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So now you have two pieces of information that the one says to put in bright light, the other says to put in not so bright light
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So what do you do? Hi, I'm Amanda Matthews, and thank you for watching this video at Orcadaria, which is all about cultivating orchids
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crafting terrarium. I grow all my orchids indoors because the outside environment really doesn't
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contribute that much to keeping an orchid outside. So I had to adapt my home office. This is where I work
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And I had to recreate those environments indoors. See, my humidity will differ from yours. My lighting
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condition will differ from yours. My air circulation will also differ. The kind of pot I use
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the kind of potting media. So if I put out a care guide
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and it has specific information. Well, that's how I grow it in my environment. The secret to
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good orchid care is finding out what works for you. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to find
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out the right environment for your orchid and how to put that down on paper so that you can give
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the best orchid care and recreate those environments where those orchids are found naturally
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There are five different things that you need to know when caring for your orchid indoors
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and how to recreate that environment. The first is going to be light
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Now there are several different kinds of orchids classified by light and you can see a whole
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video up here about that. But how to do that in your environment
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And it's really going to be trial and error for the beginning part of this
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Once you know where your orchid is, once you know how to evaluate the greenness
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of the leaf and if it's getting enough light or not. You can easily create an environment where the
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light that you choose will be reaching each orchid in what it naturally like. The second is water
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Now, how much water does this orchid like? Some orchids like to attach themselves to rocks near
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waterfalls or near streams And these rocks although they are not submerged in water they will be constantly wet Other orchids do grow in a desert climate where they hardly get any water at all
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Some orchids will have two very distinct cycles like a very strong wet cycle or a very strong
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dry cycle. So all this will depend on what your orchid likes, how much water to give it
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what potting media to use to keep this orchid in an environment
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that recreates what it like. The third one is potting media. How do you choose what potting
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media to go in your orchid? This will also influence how much you water, how often you water
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how much water you use, which water you use. The next one is temperature. Now some orchids do like a
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cooler temperature like amyltoniopsis. Others will like a much harder temperature like
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catalyus. So each orchid will have that temperature. Now most lights should not produce heat
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If your light is producing heat, you need to change it out and get a light that doesn't
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The temperature will influence if your orchid will bloom naturally or if you have to really
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induce it to bloom by changing that temperature a lot. And the last one, the fifth reason
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how to recreate this environment indoors, is to actually test your fertilizer. So
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Some orchids live in a place where they do not need that much fertilizer
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Others live in places where they need all the fertilizer they can get
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So this will depend on which fertilizer you use, how much to use, and whether you use it during the year or not
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Well, for these five things, I've been trying to find like a journal to write those things down to test
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Because, yes, I can read every guide out there. I can actually buy every book out there, but they don't know what it's
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my environment's like. They don't know what the orchid bark is here. They don't know what kind
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of the pots I'm using. They don't know which sphagnum moss I'm buying. They're all variables that
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are changing within this equation that will give a different output. I started making a journal
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and I would write down, okay, this catalyal orchid, when did it go into bloom? When did it start
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putting out new roots? And I love the roots on these. I mean, look at those roots. Yes, I do have
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to repot. But this. This is just from one year. And if you look back at one of my videos when I first repotted this, and this was repotted
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less than a year ago. So look at all that. So I need to write down when this actually came into bloom
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When did the she start? When did the new pseudobul start? And so I know when I can better fertilize it So I started writing all this stuff down in note cards And of course I lose them I mean I more of a creative type I not the more organized type
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So yeah, I would write it down here, write it in a notebook, write it on a note card and it would
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obviously get lost. So I started making an Excel sheet and it's almost done
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But what is done is the book Orchad Journey and yes, it's launched
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I finally launched it. You can go, don't go now. Wait, watch the video first
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But you can go, I'll put the link in the description. You can go to two places
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First, you can go straight to Amazon and get it. And second, you can go to my website, which www.orgadaria.com
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slash, backslash, orchids slash journey. And you can get it there, which will redirect you, of course, to Amazon
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So I started putting all this information down. and I started making guides, for example, miltoniopsis
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And I started writing about like, what stage of life did I purchase this plant as
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Because that will make a difference. Good orchid care is not keeping your, oh, sorry, it's not keeping your orchid in bloom
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It's making it re-bloom. That is when you actually graduate from the newbie to a person who knows what they're doing in orchid care
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So you can write down what stage of life this orchid bloom
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bought at. You can actually record its growth like how many leaves? What was the size of the leaf
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What were the roots like? What were the number of blooms on this orchid? Were there any
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orientations from the cellar? What was the day that this orchid was potted or repotted because
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that will influence it? There's a page on natural habitat which is where this orchid is found in
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nature and I find that more useful actually than some of the guides that I've found. If I know this
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Orchid grows naturally at an elevation of so much and humidity of so much. And in this place where they are, they get so many days of sunshine and how close to the equator they are or how high up on altitude they are
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That provides me a lot more information that I can mimic in my home environment or I can manipulate the conditions in my home environment
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So on this page of Natural Habitat, that's where I have you write down all the information of where this orchid grows in the wild
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Because if you can create that, that is the best orchid guide ever
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And you'll understand it. You'll know when you know the how and the why instead of just the what, you will go a lot further in your orchid care
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What type of fertilizer do you use? When do you start using it because each phase of the life cycle of the orchid will have a different fertilizer that you need to apply So all that you can write on your fertilizer page
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It's your environments. Nobody's going to know your environment more than you
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I mean, even though they are beneficial and I've written several more than I can count
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that's for my environment. I can't tell you how to grow your orchids in your environment
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Some of you have the luxury of growing orchids outside. I'm working on controlling envy here because I wish I could
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And I haven't left it all to trial and air. Yes, I do include a detailed care guide about phalanopsis
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catelea, dendrobium, cimbidium, and miltoniopsis. Miltoneopsis is this one right here, catelea, phelopsis
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So I'm not just going to leave you out there with trial and error. I'm going to show you how to get those basic things right and how to know what you're
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looking for before you get it. This is the first week of the launch of my book launch and I am going to
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offer it at a discounted price. But I can't keep those prices for that long because this, I mean
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this is special paper. It's paper that's made for you to ride on that. It won't bleed through because
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the worst thing, you know, you get a journal and you start writing and then you turn the page and it's like
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all I can see is the smudges on the other side. So it is better
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paper. This is your journal. The most important words in here are yours. They're not mine
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Make it a journal that you would want. Like one of my tips is to actually use tabs. And since I do
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I give a care guide, then right after is where you're going to be writing in here. For example
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here's the phalanopsis section. Get a little tab and put it in here so that you'll know where
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the phalanopsis starts and this will help you understand orchid care so much i've learned so much from
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when i first started trying to grow them indoors and i lost so many and that was just the worst feeling
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is because like i can't even keep a plant alive i mean what's wrong with me this will help alleviate
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that sense of frustration help you understand how all these variables will mix and match together to get the
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best results for you. So head on over there before I have to raise the price. If you're not sure
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quite yet about getting it, go to www.orgadaria.com's backslash orchid-dash journey. There you can read some
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of the testimonials of a few people who actually read the book. So I wish you the best in your
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orchid care and the best in managing these five variables to get the best results for your orchids
