Ruud Kleinpaste: Growing happy plants

I’m quite happy to touch on this little trouble inside the house: what is a good spot to grow certain plants? 

Julie and I have been struggling to get a few Orchids growing inside. One of them is Phalaenopsis —the Moth Orchid— and another one is Oncidium, especially the “Kandy Dancer” I fell in love with when working in Sri Lanka.

Both are a real pain to get going: tried a north-facing window, an eastern aspect, west, and nothing worked to get these plants growing, let alone flowering!!  

The Irony is that our daughter just chucked them in a south facing bay windowsill and simply couldn’t stop them flowering! 

They get a few seconds of morning sun, are covered in steam (it’s a kitchen bay window), and often get warm ovens heating the site.  

Guess what! We tried it too: south bay window in kitchen, etc, etc. Fertilised them with Orchid Food, spoke to them, read stories at night, etc, ect... NOTHING!  

Yes, we read the books and reduced the moisture regime, got solid fertiliser, liquid fertiliser, extra Potash, no potash, more Nitrogen, less Nitrogen, saw their root zones and decided that Phosphate might be the answer... NADA! 

Our south side bay window is filled with thriving plants, everything grows brilliantly here, except the bloody Orchids!  

We finally did get a little bit of hope from an Oncidium cutting (no comment on the origin of that cutting, by the way). 

Our next attempt: west window, afternoon sun every day, etc, etc. It’s tiny, but it’s alive!  

The point is that sometimes these things happen when you try to grow certain specimens, they don’t always follow the suggestions in the book. The fertiliser regime is quite often hyped-up and the commonest method of killing your plants is by simply over-watering the plants and their roots.  

So… try some neglect.   

Water them when you realise you’ve forgotten to do so for months! 

And when your daughter asks, “what is fertiliser?” try not to get shitty, just learn from that and embrace another tactic. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks that be oh Man.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
In the garden root climb passes very much. Not in
the garden. He's indoors today, and usually that would just
be like he would be, he would be recoiling in
enrage the mere prospect. But there is good reason.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Good morning sir, Good morning Jack. Are you're all right?
You're you're inside? I suppose I.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Am inside, but you know, I'm very relieved that you're
helping us out this morning because we as well as
you know, flailing about in our garden. I love to
grow stuff indoors as well. We like to have quite
a lot of green about it. But I would say
we have mixed results at our place, to say the least.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
It is interesting because and so do I sometimes, and
it is and I cannot predict when it happens. So
basically what this is about is the effect that for
us as week, we've got normally little trouble in now
there's no problem at all. But Julie and I we
we struggle to grow orchids inside sometimes. And Julie has

(01:13):
got two totally right hands and green thumbs, whereas I've
got gang green thumbs anyway. But one of the forer instances,
one of the things that we're not really that good
at is it's onsidium, which is the candy downser which
is a beautiful tropical if you're like orchids and follownopsis.

(01:34):
And here comes to think, we've got a daughter is
a blinking architect. She knows nothing about guarding me, and
she has him growing in her window sill. And every
time we go there, because they live down the road,
Julie goes like, oh my god, look at how the
hell does she do that? And it's almost this little,

(01:57):
this little family thing going on there. But there you go.
So this is exactly what I thought we need to
talk about, because we all know that if you do awkward,
she's got to have a certain nargigen fertilizer and apote. Further,
it becomes quite tricky, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But the point is that for us, it just doesn't work.

(02:20):
So you put them in a window sill right where
there's a bit of sunlight, so you put the orfice
in and then if you've got too much sun, those
plants go like, oh no, to so you go to
an eastern side where the sun in the morning only
when it's not that hot, and for the rest it's
reasonably good life. But et cetera. And it still doesn't work.

(02:44):
I go to Neki and I see she has the
same eastern sun if you like, sun rise in the morning,
very very only an hour or two in the kitchen.
And I asked her, so, how what do you think
this works? And she says, oh, it's very simple. This
is the kitchen, so it's always moist and damp, and
there's you've got the oven going, and oh and all

(03:08):
that we put we should put ours in the kitchen, nada,
you know that sort of stuff. It'll be the Gang Green.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
It'll be the Gang Green again.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
It is the Gang Green. So but anyway, so we're
we've kind of we're kind of gotting it a bit.
Julie necked a little bit of a cutting off that
plut no I should sit on there, oh ship anyway,
and and it seems to okay, it go okay at
the moment, but you know, you try all sorts of
bits and pieces, and then I came to the conclusion

(03:41):
that Nikki, just just what do you mean fertilize this.
It's just ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah. Well, well, the way we get ours to grow
is we don't put it in the window cells. So
we've got the waste facing window, but we put it
away from the window, so a good couple of meters.
I reckon that might be the key. Ruth, thank you
so much. Rude climb past in the garden for us.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
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