My first orchid was a dendrobium which I bought from a street vendor lady in front of the cathedral while I was waiting for someone when she approached me to sell dendrobium orchids. The dendrobium had two trunks with bare roots. I asked her if they will live and she said “Yes, they will live as they are easy to take care”. So, I bought it. Luckily, I was able to take care of it which until now, I still have them.
Then I started looking for more orchids, like different species. I started going online, joining groups in facebook, and yes, visiting farms, no matter how far they are. I think that’s what gets into you, when you are so enthusiastic on something. You can travel far just to get your craving.
So, I visited a farm and saw their many dendrobiums which are just planted in a clay pot with coconut husk. They were healthy and like how it is potted with that coconut husk medium. I bought 10 dendros. At that time, they were not flowering, as I was naive not to know what to buy and how to choose, so I just bought some, pretending I know something.
The dendrobium orchids flowered and yes, they are beautiful. But comparing with the orchids that I see from Facebook groups, they look common, but I don’t regret it. It was a good experience to see a farm and look how they grow orchids. After a year, I get to observe that the coconut husk has already decomposed and the dendrobiums are now wobbling and don’t have a good posture, like it is now crooked, leaning to the side, which in just a short time, it will soon fall. So, I have started to thinking of repotting it, which gave me a question, like what kind of medium should I use.
This video will illustrate how I repot dendrobium using broken clay pots with a mixture of small fern chips. It come to my observation that dendrobiums need a lot of air flow in their pot. They just need the pot to hold them to get a good standing posture, but in any other way, they could live easily, as long as the base of their trunk is not buried.
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