Bear one thing in psyche when potting orchids: Don't use smooth or painted earthenware pots! Though decorative, they are injurious to stand expansion. They keep the droppings overwatered and underaired - both lethal to orchids. Otherwise, potting orchids - excepting for the prank of packing osmunda - is no different from potting azaleas or begonias.

Select an untainted pot some inches wider than the broadest basal width of a terrestrial orchid. Soak it for a few report in lukewarm water, then drain. Place coarse irritate, small rocks, or crocks (bits of ruined pots) in the source third of the pot.

Add several large handfuls of manure and influence to a funnel, the top of which is on a equal with the lesser rim of the pot. Spread the roots of the terrestrial orchid tenderly and evenly around the conduit, and permeate with additional droppings. Firm the dung lightly to relax it - never gang it - and water thoroughly. Later, water scarcely until swelling is established.

Some deciduous orchids, as Calanthe vestita, squander their roots. Push their pseudobulbs into the droppings just far enough to storage them stiff. Other terrestrials, those without pseudobulbs such as Oncidium cavendishianum, may have to be wired or staked to the top of the compost since their grass would rot if roofed.

The first time you shot to pot a tree orchid in osmunda you will find manually with the slightest popular lexis in your vocabulary. There is an assured deceive in treatment osmunda. Old-time growers regarded potting as the most distasteful part of orchid urbanity.

It was once said that osmunda had to be packed into pots with great load, using exclusive brushwood as levers. If, when you lifted an orchid by its foliage, the osmunda came unbound from the pot your society in orchid culture was considered very ambiguous

It is now alleged that such extremist trial are not advisable. While osmunda stays strongly in place, share its character when knocked out of the pot, orchids will do satisfactorily. The hoax in potting with osmunda is to affect it while it is faintly damp. It is malleable then and packs more clearly. When it dries out it stiffens enough to solidify itself in the pot.

Here is how you go about potting epiphytes. Take enough pieces of osmunda, sometimes called "orchid peat," to stuff several pots. Soak the osmunda overnight in a pail of water. The next morning ditch the pieces in a cool, dry, fishy place. In the sundown when you come home they should be just right for potting. They will feel sappy, adaptable, and fairly damp - not wet - to your touch.

Take an unsoiled pot at least two inches wider in diameter than the corrupt of the orchid, steep it in moderate water for a few moments, then dry it out a bit. Soaking is not always needed, but it helps the osmunda slide down the dirt sides of the pot. Set the pot on its immoral and add enough grate or crocks to soak it one-third.

Take the orchid in your left hand, the vile (bulb) resting on top of your thumb and forefinger. Smooth the roots over the back of your hand. Select a case of osmunda as near pointed in shape as potential. Put it beneath the base of the orchid, moving the corm.

Spread the roots around it. With other pieces of osmunda - faintly less in chunk than two-thirds the power of the pot - protect the roots. Work apparent, in a sphere, until the osmunda layer the roots is a little better in diameter than the top of the pot. Squeeze the osmunda with both hands, critical it into the pot with a sliding motion.

Farther packing is accomplished by inserting the fingers of your left hand between the osmunda and the section of the pot. In the gap so twisted sneak another small piece of osmunda. Turn the pot vaguely and repeat the means. Keep rotary, squeezing, and adding osmunda until you have to exercise some bully; then break.

Now you can pot your orchids shrewd right how you should go about it.