How To Care For Orchids With Preventing Diseases
Two very important considerations when learning how to care for orchids is preventing diseases.
This article will deal with how to care for orchids by preventing diseases—particularly those that seem annoying but aren’t serious and then some of those that are very harmful and must be prevented.
Insects that are annoying but don’t harm:
The following insects are annoying to the orchid enthusiast but won’t usually do any damage: ants, mealy bugs, aphis, thousand-leg bugs, sow flies, fruit flies, plant lice found in decomposing potting material. Though these common pests may be unattractive, they are merely minor pests and are nothing to be concerned about.
Some garden “pests” should even be encouraged because they eat other pests. Though they might seem to be undesirables in your garden or greenhouse, they can be very beneficial to your orchids and other plants: snakes, toads, frogs, and salamanders. These creatures help you get rid of things that might be causing many of your true problems with your plants.
Some pests appear specifically in the spring. The first is one that is common also to gladiolas—thrips. Thrips disfigure the leaves of your orchids. Though they might not kill the plants, they detract from their beauty.
Another is red spiders. Red spiders create ugly rust-colored spots and they trouble the cymbidium species in particular. They are so dangerous to miltonia orchids that they can even kill them.
The worst orchid pests are those that you can’t see till the damage has been done or the plant already dying or dead. These are usually very contagious and difficult to get rid of. Sometimes some plants can be isolated to solve the problem, but sometimes these diseases can wipe out your collection. Prevention is the first and most important line of defense, and overall attention and cleanliness in your plants’ environment is the better part of prevention.
Below are some of the things you need to do to keep your beautiful orchids and other plants healthy:
(1) Keep your plant area absolutely clean. Keep old leaves, flowers, wood material, unused potting soil, unused pots, dead plants or anything unnecessary to the plants themselves picked up. Sterilize your utensils regularly, especially between potting orchids.
(2) Don’t crowd your plants. They need air and space on the bench to grow happily and stay in good health.
(3) Isolate infected plants or those that you suspect might be infected.
(4) Control the humidity at the level needed for the type of orchids you are growing.
(5) Don’t chill the house when it is wet.
(5) Spray with an approved insecticide that you have bought from a garden shop.
(6) Consider alternating the insecticide with fumigation—again with something safe developed particularly for orchids.
(6) Removal armored scale using a soft brush or a fine spray under pressure.
(7) Sponge fungus-infected spots with corrosive sublimate or copper sprays.
(8) Dusting injured parts with sulphur to check the spread of rot.
As you can see there are many types of pests and diseases that can harm your orchid plants. But once you know what to look for then it becomes much easier to maintain beautiful orchid plants for many years to come. Now you know how to care for orchids and how to prevent diseases from infecting your orchids.
