This orchid addiction - Orchid Board

William · #1 12-25-2007, 03:17 PM

It didn't take me too long to fall into the orchid addiction but I remember when it was. It was the A.O.S. show in Miami. One look and I was hooked! I was wondering when others succumbed to the lure.

GreggC · #2 12-25-2007, 03:28 PM

Are you going? If I lived there, you bet your a** I would go!!

William · #3 12-25-2007, 03:52 PM

Of course!! I am most definitely hooked. I'm sitting here, cooking Christmas dinner, watching our friends in the pool, thinking that I can't wait for the next Miami show. I did go to the one in Delray beach earlier and that was great. They have quite an outdoor display. How did you northeners get interested in orchids?

kiki-do · #4 12-25-2007, 09:27 PM

Hi William! I got hooked when I saw my friend's orchids in a windowsill during a cold blah winter and she had several phals in bloom plus some catts. It was the most intoxicating sight I'd ever experienced. She convinced me that even I could grow them and in a regular home, well that was it..... Yes, I am so hooked that I tended my orchids first this morning, then Christmas started right after that! Tsk tsk me! kiki-do

cb977 · #5 12-25-2007, 09:32 PM

Hi William

You and I got started in about the same way...I bought an un-named vanda at a flea market because it was so pretty, the weekend before the Orchid Lovers of Spring Hill show in 2005. Figured I should go to the show to see if I could "learn what I need to know" about the plant I bought

How naive!!!

I walked around the show ooohing and aahing and trying to stop my jaw from dragging along the floor...and joined the club on the spot!

William · #6 12-25-2007, 09:57 PM

The more I learn the more I realize I know nothing at all! I was so into my newfound interest that I even wanted to learn flasking. Talk about running before you walk! I'm now moving at a slower pace. I was glad to hear from you kiki-do. Here in Florida it seems to me that it can be easier to start than up north. I hardly saw an orchid when in New York much less try to grow a flower that seemed so delicate. I've come to find they're hardy little buggers................here in Florida at least. Love to hear of other addiction starts.

William · #7 12-25-2007, 10:00 PM

Tell me about it Susanne! I couldn't believe the varieties.

flhiker · #8 12-25-2007, 11:41 PM

William, I know just where your coming from, I was hiking on the Florida Trail and camped next a Orchid in bloom, it was the most magnificent flower I have ever seen in the wild and had to know what it was.(it was a Cigar Orchid) After the great response I received from the people here on the OB when I posted the picture for I.D. It started a addiction I never saw coming.

Ray · #9 12-26-2007, 07:27 AM

Sheer determination is what got me.

After volunteering for over a year in the greenhouses of what is now the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, I was given a cattleya. It took me almost two years of the old root rot/desiccation torture to kill it, and back then, I simply didn't kill plants (if only that was still true).

After that, I decided to learn more so I wouldn't repeat that - and that was just the beginning. 2008 will be my 35th year of orchid growing.

cupcake · #10 12-26-2007, 10:27 AM

4 years ago I went to a local plant fair, and one of the marquees had 1 solitary orchid stand. I had no idea what I was buying and my OH went white when I said it had cost £15, but it was in June and still flowering at Xmas! Oh yes, it is Phal, flarespots, and in spike as we speak. Since then I've acquired another 20 plants of various sizes but far from being hardy here, I have to bring them into the middle of the room at night so they don't get chilled on the windowsills! Judi