Blog of orchid growing activity

Flowering Season

20/6/2016

Common Spotted Orchid, no longer quite so common

Southern Marsh Orchid

Now we are mid way through the year it is delightful to find so many of our orchids growing vigorously and in flower. It is also the time to think about which species you want in your garden or meadow. In a garden with a pond there may be a boggy patch, the overflow area for example, which is ideally suited to Marsh Marigolds and Marsh Orchids. Interestingly Southern Marsh Orchids do not need to be sitting in water, but they can and Common Spotted Orchids will also tolerate a surprising level of dampness. If you decide it is worth growing Southern Marsh Orchids you could always do what a friend of mine has done and that is to sink an entire plastic dustbin in a flower bed with a few slits about 30cm or so below ground level. What this does is ensures that the ground never dries out and the orchids thrive. It should not need a whole dustbin as that requires a very deep hole to be dug, you could probably achieve the same affect with a big bucket.

I have picked on Common Spotted and Marsh Orchids because if you grow them in close proximity you may well find that natural hybridisation takes place. The resulting plants can have truly spectacular flowers, some with the lovely spotted leaves of the Common Spotted Orchid. Very often the colour of the hybrid owes more to the Southern Marsh Orchid than the other parent, so the result really is lovely.

Anyway, now is the time to get you plants into the ground, or pots if you intent to grow them as show plants so that next year they are well established and produce the flowers you want.

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Flasks for sale

5/6/2016

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Here at Bewdley Orchids what we would really like to happen is for all the gardens and meadows in country to be a haven for native orchids. What we also appreciate is that this would be both a technically difficult activity and a very expensive one. As you will know, the complexity of the life cycle means that plants are rarely suitable for potting up earlier than one year after sowing the seeds. This means that we cannot offer them for sale often until they have been growing for several years. Consequently the small plants are a big price. Well, thanks to an enquiry by telephone we have decided that we should short circuit the process, very slightly. What we intend to do is take to our orchid society talks, plants in flasks which we cans sell at a much reduced cost. These will need to be looked after until they are ready to be potted on, but should result in a good crop of plants.

We can only offer this service face to face because the cultures would not survive being sent through post. As you can imagine from the photograph, one good shake and the agar gel would be flying around inside the jar causing all sorts of damage to the orchid seedlings.

Each jar will contain five plants and will cost between £20 for Green Winged Orchids and £25 for Bee Orchids. At the moment these are the only two species we are offering for sale in this way as we are really testing the water before including more varieties.

With this in mind, we will take these specially produced jars of plants to our talks, but if you cannot get to a talk we have an idea. If you send a request via our Contact page we will take a jar to one of our shows where you can have a look at it and decide if you want to buy it. Have a look on our show page for the date and place of the next show, and we hope to see you there.

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Flowering Season

Flasks for sale

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