Well howdy. My name is Steve and you’ve landed on https://hydroponicorchids.com/
I created this website for folks who want to learn about growing hydroponic orchids.
I am not an expert but I hope to document my journey in growing orchids hydroponically.
While I have never grown orchids before I have grown almost everything else.
I don’t know why it took so long to get here. If you watched old movies or TV shows orchid growers were almost always depicted as rich, old, and eccentric.
Well, I’m definitely not rich but I am kind of old and definitely eccentric so like the Meatloaf song 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
So I have been growing plants way back about as far as I can remember.
My mom always had a house full of plants and I started growing things like coleus and planting orange seeds.
Remember when oranges had seeds?
As a kid, I was always playing in the dirt. My mom always said I would either be an archeologist or a farmer.
Of course, she wanted me to be an archeologist but I ended up becoming a farmer.
So I ran a truck farm and grew fresh vegetables. I planted an apple orchard and experimented with growing dried flowers like statice and strawflowers. I was always trying new and unusual crops.
For some reason, I never got around to growing orchids probably because everything I did was done outdoors.
But like many that have gone before me, I lost my farm and ended up living in town and in a small apartment.
I have always had a strong case of zone denial. I realized by growing indoors I could keep plants that would never make it outdoors.
So I have aloes, euphorbia, yuccas, a coffee plant, and others. Now I have orchids too!
About the closest I ever got to growing orchids was growing tropical nepenthes and other carnivorous plants.
But the one thing this apartment had was 2 big closets. Being a cannabis patient I started growing my own medicine.
Like many, I started simply. I was growing in pots and saucers filled with coco. But I soon realized if I wanted to make the most of my space, hydroponics was the answer.
Not many people grew anything that way and there was not a lot of information on how to grow hydroponically. So there were many years of trial and error.
My first hydroponic system was top feed drip and I was sold on hydroponics.
Since then I have grown plants with aeroponics, flood and drain, recirculating top feed drip systems, and DWC.
I have adapted years of learning and growing hydroponic cannabis over to growing hydroponic vegetables with great success.
Growing Hydroponic Orchids
Now I want to turn that knowledge over to growing hydroponic orchids.
Orchids have always intrigued me. They are exotic, kind of mysterious and some say hard to grow but hard is a relative term.
So while I am sure many people know more about growing orchids than I do, I doubt many of them know as much about hydroponic growing.
So as I look around on the internet I have not found a lot of information besides growing orchids in jars of water.
I may end up doing things a lot differently because I do like to experiment. Sorry orchids, nothing personal.
I already have some orchids growing in coco coir and they seem to like it.
Undoubtedly I will kill some plants in my journey but I know I will have success too.
One gardener once said if you aren’t killing things you aren’t learning and I agree.
Don’t fear making mistakes. We all do because we are human. But failures offer us a teaching moment if we take advantage of them. I have learned far more from my failures than my successes.
So follow along as I learn to grow hydroponic orchids.