M. floribunda has pods
 

I'm not sure it's worth my time, but my Masdevallia floribunda has two seed pods growing.

I know I don't want to send it out to a flasking lab (unless I can get one super cheap!) - I have no idea what the pollen parent is or where it came from. I did not intentionally fertilize anything and it may have happened before I bought it. However, here I am, with orchid seed pods growing and a desire from an experience perspective to try to grow orchids from seed.

So, I've done a bit of light reading. Most of it involves heavy sterilizing and special boxes, etc, etc. I don't really have the time to spend creating a special lab area nor do I have space in my apartment. Is there a simpler alternative that I could do at home in my kitchen? Is there a "natural" method? Wild orchids don't grow up in flasks though I do know that they require mycorrhizae fungi to germinate. Has anybody tried to grow them more naturally? I wonder if it's possible to "seed" required fungi by taking some media from the parents or even media from outdoors? (I know a few places near my house where wild orchids are growing though I'm not sure about species specifics). I might even experiment since I haven't got any real skin in this game.

Final question: If I don't know when the flowers where pollinated, how do I tell when a pod has matured and is ready to go?

They won't grow naturally on their own without symbiotic fungus. You have no way of knowing whether that is present. Flasking will be needed.

There are many different recipes for culture media for different orchids. Different genera require different things in their culture media. There are commercial products available to buy for not much money, and people also make their own media.

User roby in Sicily posted about his flasking in jars, using household bleach for sterilization. It's a sticky thread in the Propagation forum. And if you use the search function and put in the words "bleach flask seed" you will get lots of threads from people here trying this.

Masdevallia floribunda seed pod should take about 130 to 150 days to mature. Place a coffee filter around the growing pod as soon as you see signs of a slight yellowing on either end. The pod can be left to split naturally on it's own or it
can be harvested at the correct amount of days if you know when pollination took place.