Must I Kill A Plant To Save One?

The Orchid Experiment

This is my prized orchid. A Vanda. Beautiful, right?

So is this one.

Not so nice. Spindly. No flowers. Actually, they are the same plant, about 15 years apart. Yes, my orchid is about 20 years old, bought at an orchid show in the shadow of the World Trade Center twin towers. The first photo was when it was happily blooming twice a year with glorious 5 inch flowers, two at a time on window sill of my home. Grew like that for many years.

It was a happy plant, thriving where it shouldn’t be. A Vanda, as it is known, is not supposed to survive let alone flourish in the cold dry winters of the northeast. In fact, after purchase from a California grower at the orchid fair I went looking for local supplier and was told “don’t bother; we don’t stock them.” But no one bothered to tell the Vanda. And it soon became my favorite plant. Can you fall in love with a plant? Yes you can.

The problem is now that gorgeous plant has stopped blooming. And instead, is giving birth to lots of baby plants, keikes, as they are called. This is not uncommon.

My dilemma (and an illustration of why I’m the geek in the garden) is what do I do to get my plant to bloom again? My options:

1. Do nothing and let the keikes grow to maturity? I’m not sure how long that will take. I am a senior citizen.

2. Try to “snap off” individual shoots and re-pot. Works on other orchids, but will strip the “bark” off the Vanda. Could be fatal.

3. Separate the bottom of the plant with lots of roots, from the rest of the plant leaving the largest offspring at the bottom to grow, and the other shoots to wither and die.

4. Cut the plant into three new plants, leaving the two top shoots to die.

I’ve tried a variation of this method couple of years ago: cutting off the top of an orchid and hoping that the bottom grows a new plant, and re-potting the top.. With mixed results.

Here’s the top of the re-potted Vanda. (Yes, there is no soil. This is an epiphyte - needs no soil. Gets nutrition and water from the air or when you feed and water it.)

Here’s the bottom:

Ugly, ugly. It never grew a new top.

What I will do, in the tradition of orchid geekdom, is experiment with a bit of all the options. Cut off some new grows. Leave others on the plant. And fertilize like hell. Just have to wait for warmer weather to move mom and the little ones outside.

What ever I do, it will be painful. There is something harder to do than throwing out a book: killing a plant to save one.

Stay tuned.