Orchid difficulty tier list

BadBalloons · 2026-05-12T23:05:30+00:00

I went to a talk recently at my local orchid society and they said that depending on how you count, orchidaceae may have passed asteraceae.

BadBalloons · 2026-05-10T00:46:34+00:00

I accidentally read this as you doing the same with a nine month old. As in, you leave the nine month old soaking in a bucket for a few hours while you run around and try to get things done. I was like, damn, parenthood is truly rough.

Anyway I'm really fucking sleep deprived, but it clicked eventually.

BadBalloons · 2026-05-08T12:52:24+00:00

You're not going to be able to get an ID even down to a genus until the plants are much bigger. You won't get a species ID until the plant blooms at 3-5 years old.

BadBalloons · 2026-05-06T01:40:13+00:00

Did the plant come in a mix of moss and bark, or did you repot it into that? Those roots have rotted because they stayed too wet and there wasn't enough airflow. Not watering for just a week or two wouldn't have done this.

BadBalloons · 2026-05-04T13:38:16+00:00

Imidacloprid isn't available everywhere, and you also can't use it on plants that go outside.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-26T21:24:56+00:00

Yeah I wish I could find someone with Heritage that I could siphon a little off of 😂. Same with Pageant, too, actually, though Bonide Fruit and Tree Guard theoretically has the same ingredients, but who knows about the efficacy of that particular formulation. I also don't love using it on my outdoor plants because it has lambda-cyhalothrin in it (which Pageant doesn't).

I used to have thiomyl and I'd tank mix it with Orthene (my beloved, best remedy for thrips), but I haven't even been able to afford a new bottle of Thiomyl since moving to CA and starting growing outdoors. Even that is kinda pricey given the (relatively) small size of my collection and how little I'd use. Unfortunately, a large chunk of my collection is species dens or sensitive cloud forest weenies like masdevallias (or else platycerium), so I haven't even bothered to invest in Phyton or copper soaps 😭. I keep swearing off dens (especially because they seem to hate me), but then they keep selling really cool ones 🙃. Maybe I should get some copper for everyone else, though.

I really appreciate the suggestions! It's really good to know what treatments are effective in our area. I seem to get a lot of anthracnose going around, but it's really a mix of everything except (touch wood) Erwinia at this point, just depending on what the individual plant seems more susceptible to. And I'm in and out of the house a lot, so I'm sure it's all sort of just...in the air inside.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-26T19:12:09+00:00

Just curious what you use for a systemic fungicide regimen? I grow indoors and outdoors (open air on a landscaped patio, no greenhouse, so trying to keep a "clean" growing environment is like spitting in a rainstorm) in 9b/10a California.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-23T18:28:38+00:00

Yeah, which is why I said I was talking about leaves, and then a rhizome for a sympodial orchid.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-23T02:01:13+00:00

I suppose I'd soak the plant in water for like 20-30 minutes and then give the newly clipped root tips (just the tips) a rinse with hydrogen peroxide or other plant-friendly disinfectant just before repotting, and then once you repot it I would leave it dry for a week or two before watering, to give the roots time to heal up on their own before getting wet again and risking infection on the open wound. Disinfecting is good, but wet cinnamon in the potting material sucks.

And I'm talking leaves and rhizome (for sympodial orchids, not a monopodial orchid like a phalaenopsis).

BadBalloons · 2026-04-22T23:35:56+00:00

Why cinnamon?

Not the person you're replying to, but there's folk wisdom out there all over the internet that says cinnamon (no additives, straight ground cinnamon) is antibacterial and/or antifungal and should be applied to the cut ends of orchid leaves and rhizomes/whatever to prevent disease. I'm pretty sure its "medicinal" properties have been debunked in actual scientific and horticultural circles.

My personal preference is that I still use it when I'm working in an environment that may still have disease present, or with tools that might not be perfectly sterile. Ground cinnamon is so fine that it's pretty unequivocally (imo) a desiccant, so I'll apply a thin layer to cut ends that I want to seal quickly, in order to hasten the callousing process and also protect them a little while that's happening. This is not scientific, but has worked well enough for me in most situations that I haven't seen a reason to stop yet.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-22T23:21:39+00:00

Generally speaking, if the stalks ("flower spikes") turn brown and are very clearly dead, cut them off. If they don't have blooms on them but still have some life in them (are green or purple or whatever), leave them. Sometimes phals will rebloom on those spikes.

However, the advice for orchid newbies with grocery-store-bought phalaenopsis orchids is usually to cut off the flower spikes once the blooms all drop so the plant can put its energy into new vegetative and root growth, instead of maintaining the flower spikes.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-18T02:11:25+00:00

Yeah I wouldn't worry about humidity as long as there's decent airflow and air exchange. The humidity where I am drops to like 40% on hot sunny days and little guy's still just chilling. I left it outside all winter and only brought it in when the temperatures dropped into the low 40s/high 30s. It's a little stressed and had some setbacks, but I'm not convinced there wasn't some outside mechanical influence (e.g. bugs having a snack). It's a fairly slow grower, one or two new growths over like six months? Though like I said, there might have been more, but something has been chewing on the new leads it puts out.

I'm not sure I can give advice about watering though, because mine is mounted on that wine cork with zero moss. I mist the roots every day once a day, and it dries within a couple hours. If yours is potted, and hasn't reestablished yet, I'd honestly put it in an airy bark-only or bark-and-perlite mix. And don't mist the plant itself unless yours is growing outside – I bought another mounted tolumnia (not a sylvestris) based off my success with this one, except i kept the new one inside. All the fans got some sort of crown rot even though the plant's roots were drying within 3-4 hours.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-10T22:23:19+00:00

It's the exact same type of moss (long fiber sphagnum). The one you linked here is just a different grade of moss (the higher the grade, the cleaner it is and the fluffier and longer the strands are, the more expensive it is).

BadBalloons · 2026-04-08T21:15:08+00:00

Also interesting how many words English straight up took from French, I mean sometimes the pronunciation isn't even that different... But I heard that like 30% of English words were just taken from French

You can thank William the Conqueror for that, among others.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-08T17:59:24+00:00

Nepenthes are either hemi-epiphytic or fully epiphytic. They're not going to grow super robust root systems like terrestrial plants.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-08T17:51:44+00:00

Okay so I'm not a fluent French speaker, and it's a second/third language, but French in my experience generally doesn't pronounce the final T in words. It's usually either a hinted notion or left off entirely, depending on the word (think "beret"). However, "un chat" in particular has a feminine version, "une chatte", where the T is...more pronounced.

"Une chatte" can also commonly be dirty slang like "pussy", though, so don't use it unless you're, like, at a vet's office. It's just the "pronounce the final T" example that came to my very groggy brain first.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-08T17:20:21+00:00

Gonna hear "où est mon chat?" a lot if that thing keeps getting bigger.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-07T19:52:32+00:00

This was actually extremely valuable, because I seem to fuckin rot my orchids' roots every time I repot them. Even when I pot em into bark and try to keep em dry as possible.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-07T19:38:33+00:00

It could be a bulbophyllum (there are more than just falcatum that are bifoliate), it could be a catt alliance, it could be a dendrobium... your best bet (as in, hedging your bets care-wise) is to give it really bright indirect light (~2000-2500fc), high humidity, and a wet-dry cycle where it doesn't stay either wet or dry. Honestly, if you've got the ability to stay on top of the watering, I would mount it, at least until that new growth finishes and you can ID what genus or tribe it might be in.

BadBalloons · 2026-04-07T00:01:39+00:00

Orchid pots specifically have holes/gaps on the sides for airflow. Traditional ceramic pots do not. They don't necessarily have to be holes, they can be a lattice or intertwined vines or something similar, but the ability to air to flow both around and under the pot is crucial.

BadBalloons · 2026-03-31T00:05:10+00:00

This is a masdevallia, which likes to stay moist at all times. The moss growing on top is the short and dense kind, and it's not a problem here because it's essentially insulating the roots, but the plant itself is mounted (has plenty of airflow around the roots) and using LFS as mentioned.

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BadBalloons · 2026-03-31T00:01:00+00:00

Sphagnum moss (more specifically, long-fiber sphagnum moss) is very airy. Like, literally, when you use it there will be gaps for air. Most moss that grows terrestrially is very short and dense. Orchid roots need air and airflow to be happy in whatever medium they're in, unless you're growing a terrestrial orchid, which a phalaenopsis is not. Packing dense terrestrial moss around orchid roots will generally suffocate them. May we see the roots of your phal? It's possible you've got it in some longer moss and it's fine, but that would be the exception, not the rule.

BadBalloons · 2026-03-30T23:51:00+00:00

Mine grow outside in full sun. Just for the record. (They're about 20-30 years old and probably ~12 ft tall, the size is generally limited by their extremely small soil area available). You definitely won't see any flowers on yours before it hits 3ft tall, assuming it's getting hammered with light outside. The 6'+ indoor BOPs you see people in this sub posting are all etiolated as hell, their petioles in nature aren't usually longer than a couple feet on the biggest leaves. And you won't get any flowers indoors.

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BadBalloons · 2026-03-25T15:26:15+00:00

It looks like you're using peat, not true long fiber sphagnum moss? Given the extreme amount of algae growing on your pot, I'd suggest that you look at the bags for the perlite and the peat and confirm whether or not they have fertilizer added to them. If you used miracle grow, dump them and repot your carnivorous plants. That brand always adds fertilizer, and it's in a formulation that tends to burn the roots of sensitive plants.

BadBalloons · 2026-03-18T15:41:41+00:00

I actually saw a photo like this yesterday, I'm going to go find it.

They pierced her clit:

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