Alan Titchmarsh shares tips for looking after moth orchids
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Orchids can be challenging to care for, especially now temperatures are cooler. The beautiful plants require careful watering and a good amount of sunlight. More unusual varieties of orchids can be pricey, so growing your own new one is a great way to fill your home with the stunning plants without breaking the bank.
A houseplant expert has shared a “handy” technique to clone your orchid and get a new one for free.
CEO of independent houseplant site Friends or Friends, Silver Spence, spoke exclusively to Express.co.uk about how to care for orchids, including some of the “tricks” you can use to keep your plant happy.
She explained: “There are a lot of really cool tricks with orchids.
“I personally have a few dual orchids and I love them.
“You can use keiki. Keiki is the Hawaiian word for child.
“It’s a word used in botany to describe the offspring of the orchids.
“There’s a hormone that has been engineered to procreate your orchids.
“If you see your orchid is going down hill, you can rub a bit of keiki paste on it and clone it.
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“Then you will have a brand new orchid.”
Keiki is a plant produced asexually by an orchid plant to be an exact clone of the mother plant.
Silver said using keiki paste is a “handy” trick to know and is the “best bet” with orchids, as well as keeping them well-watered and warm.
“Keeping that handy, keeping orchid mist handy and making sure you don’t saturate the roots, you keep them warm is going to be your best bet with orchids,” she added.
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To use keiki paste, Orchidbliss.com suggested using a sterile blade to make a shallow cut on a node or a bump of the orchid stalk.
The node will look like a joint in the stalk.
Take a little bit of the node off so the flesh is slightly exposed.
Then, apply a small amount of keiki paste wearing gloves, with a chopstick or cotton swab onto the cut area of the node.
You can apply the paste to more than one node at a time.
After a few weeks, you should be able to see the development of keikis or flowers.
The leaves will develop first before the flower stalks start to emerge looking like a closed fist.
Friends or Friends is The UK’s number one destination for baby plants.
They’re a small independent company bringing affordable houseplants to your doorstep – because plants are friends.
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