Sleeping orchid buds: awakening methods

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

Under natural conditions, orchids propagate by seeds and lateral layering. At home, dormant buds are awakened to obtain shoots on orchids. At the same time, it is important to be patient, because it will take more than one month for the growth and development of the baby.

Features of plants

Orchids are monopodial plants. Under this concept understand the ongoing vegetation at one point. When plants reproduce, processes are formed from meristems - these are dormant buds. They are located on the stems between the leaves and can provoke the formation of either a peduncle or babies. Buds can be located at the very bottom of the flower arrow. They are hidden under dense scales.

If, instead of an arrow, an arrow with a lateral process grows out of a kidney, then this is a basal baby. To propagate orchids at home, they use flower stalks, or rather buds sleeping on them.

Awakening period

Meristems wake up during the period of active growth of the root system and leaves. In natural conditions, this happens with the onset of warm and rainy weather. While washing the bark of trees with rain, the roots are saturatedorchids with nutrients, provoking the birth of a new life. For home breeding, it is necessary to simulate a similar microclimate.

Optimal conditions

To awaken sleeping kidneys, it is necessary to create optimal conditions, and only after that engage in awakening.

So, you need:

Reduce lighting. During the flowering period, plants are placed on the windowsill, and in order to awaken the buds, you need to remove them from the light or shade the glass.
Make sure the temperature is at least 27 degrees.
Increase air humidity to 60%. At home, the spraying method is used for this purpose. Humidity can also be increased by placing the mother plant on a pallet of wet pebbles.
Feed orchids with a complex fertilizer with a high level of nitrogen. Give nutrition with every second watering.

After creating conditions for reproduction, proceed to the second part of the awakening.

Reproduction by side layers

This type of reproduction is carried out in several stages:

Stimulation of awakening.
Sprouting layering.
Separation of the grown layer.

Sleeping buds in an orchid must be properly stimulated to wake up. To do this, immediately after flowering, the peduncle is removed. The cut is made two centimeters above the upper kidney. The place of pruning must be treated with antiseptics.

With a sharp sterile knife, the scales are carefully removed from the sleeping buds, so as not tocatch the meristem itself. Then it is treated with cytokinin paste, a preparation based on a natural plant hormone. He provokes the orchid to division. After about a couple of months, the awakened bud will show whether it is a baby or a peduncle.

Peduncle for reproduction

And how to wake up sleeping buds on the peduncle? Many flower growers use this particular breeding method. To do this, the cut arrow is placed in a vessel with water so that one end is immersed in water by five centimeters. Then a kidney awakening procedure is performed.

An arrow with a peduncle is left in a vessel with water, and covered with a bag on top.

Team Baby

The baby will be separated from the orchid when it has at least three roots. In this case, we can confidently talk about the successful reproduction of the plant. The layer is removed from the mother plant with a length of its own roots of at least five centimeters. In order not to damage the tiny plant, it is necessary to leave a piece of the peduncle on each side of the place where the baby is attached - about half a centimeter. The first year the baby is kept in a greenhouse with a high level of humidity. During adaptation, yellowing of the leaves may be observed. As soon as the roots adapt to independent life, the leaves will grow rapidly.