I am so excited because I just went to an orchid nursery for the first time. Well I'd been to another one before but not to be compared, the other one is a huge indoor tropical garden thing with butterflies and even monkeys in the trees and fish in the water, it's very commercialized. You pay an entrance fee, you can spend the whole day there, there are restaurants... You can also walk through the "nursery", but at the end of the whole thing there's a shop where you can buy orchids but also other plants. It's just like a huge flower shop.
This one I went to last Saturday I discovered by coincidence as I was looking at online orchid shops, and I discovered that this one is really near to my place. Just a 20 minute ride. They are only open the last Saturday of the month and that's it. The rest of the time it's an online shop.
It was located at someone's farm and I would say small. Not that big (compared to the commercialized thing I mentioned earlier). I just saw rows of plants and it was really narrow. They explained to me that you can push the rows to make pathways so that you can walk in between the rows, and look at the different orchids.
Wow I was amazed how small they were! I had never seem such small Phalaenopsis for example for sale... I was like: Are you sure you're selling these? I've never bought anything so small before. My Phals come from Ikea or the local gardening store and are big in comparison. They even had super tiny versions, in plastic containers and then the ones a little bigger in these big containers that hold a number of them (OK so these ones were not for sale) all I saying is I think these were like "babies" very very young orchids.
The truth is, they didn't have anything that I would find at the local gardening store or Ikea... I was really amazed at this experience. I also pointed out that I'm scared of getting a new type of orchid that I'm not familiar with, I wouldn't know what care to give. After all I'm just getting started, just wanting to learn, after being a notorious "plant killer" in the past.
In the end I got talked into buying something I had never imagined I would have.
The guy told assured me this one is not too difficult to care for as long as I never let it dry out completely.
OK, so here it is.... my new beauty: A Macodes Petola, Jewel Orchid.
Ok, so I really hope I won't kill this one. It is stunningly beautiful in my opinion.
Just a question: I was told that when it grows bigger I should repot it in spaghnum moss. However, the stuff it's in now is really dark green and slimy to the touch. The truth is every single one they had in the nursery was laying in the dark green stuff. I didn't think much of it until now that I'm suddenly reading about it online about algae growing on spaghnum and that it's not supposed to be that good. So should I repot it? Put new spaghnum moss in it?
Went to a nursery for the first time
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