Hello from West Mi

[Branden_Pearson]

Just wanted to introduce myself and say hi. My name is Branden. I'm a bio student at Grand Valley State University. IV kept and propegated plants for years but just easy stuff like african violets and other house plants. Now I want to get into orchids and other tropicals. Just need to do my research and figure out what orchids stay small enough and are somewhat easy for my first one.

Sent from Samsung Note 3

[lexusnexus]

Welcome to the boards, Brandon. Glad to have you here. Phals are the easiest orchids for me. It's my goal in life to educate people on just how easy it is to grow orchids.

[Bulbofett]

Welcome to the board!

"Somewhat easy" will depend on your growing conditions. For your climate in Michigan I'd go with a cool or intermediate growing species. Dendrobiums are one such genus that has many cool growing species while still being easy to grow.

[bellini girl]

[nikkik]

Welcome, Brandon! I am also in Michigan and do well growing many different types of orchids. If you get a chance Marni Turkel will be speaking to the Michigan Orchid Society (in Birmingham) and the Greater Lansing Orchid Society in September. She will be bringing plants for sale and this would be a fantastic opportunity to learn about orchids and pick up some interesting plants.

[WhiteRabbit]

[tarev]

Welcome to OB!

[Paul]

Greetings, Branden. Personally, I find AVs to be much more difficult than many orchids.

I'd recommend checking into the Grand Valley Orchid Society (they meet in GR).

https://www.facebook.com/GrandValleyOrchidSociety

[NYCorchidman]

Welcome to the exciting new world with no end! hahaha

Well, easy is a very relative term, but there are many orchids that stay small and easy to grow and bloom.

I highly recommend neofinetia, which is a Japanese Wind orchid. They are very short staying under 6-8 inch. cute white flowers with strong sweet fragrance to boot! These are cheap and easy to find (and there are crazy expensive ones too!). Visit Hausermann orchid. I think they have these at a low cost.
The website also lists a few other easy to grow orchids.

Any orchids can be called "easy" as long as you can provide the right conditions they need to thrive.
So what grow conditions do you have? then you can start searching for plants that fit your growing conditions.

Some more minis that I find easy to grow and bloom are:

Dendrobium Ollygophylum,dendrobium lamyaiae, amsiela monticola, eurychone rothchildiana (these last two have big flowers on small plant, and also they are scented)...these are a few species that I have tried, but there are many small ones that are easy to deal with.

Also, if you have cool room for winter, the options go up like crazy!

Paphiopedilum micranthum, armeniacum are all tiny plants but they need some cool winter periods to do well.

Tolumnias are also small orchids with brightly colored flowers.

[Cntry]

Look for any orchid that says "Mini" usually they will sit on a windowsill for you. If you get to many send me a few as I am just starting out and I have one regular size orchid but I would love the small ones as they will be easier for me to work with as I have MS.

When are you planning on working with them? It takes months about 5 to get a seed pod if it develops for you. You will first have to hand pollinate either one orchid with 2 spikes on it. Using each spike to pollinate the other spike but leave in the mothers pollen.

You can also do stem culture using the node and grow from it in a culture set up, or just do it the easy way and use keiki paste which is a hormone paste you apply to one of the nodes after the blooms have dropped to get the keiki which stands for baby in Hawaii. Use only the bottom few nodes as they will not have flowered.