Two years ago, while traveling down a YouTube rabbit hole of orchid care videos, I stumbled upon someone who grew orchids with bare roots… in glasses and jars of water. I was fascinated. The question was whether or not I was willing to risk one of my orchids to try it… I mean, I had watched her video and she showed step-by-step how to do it, plus there was everything I had learned watching hours and hours of videos. At the time, I had two orchids, Poche and Chadebise. Of those two, Poche was the smaller of the two so I chose him to be my sacrificial lamb.
I now realize just how much I didn’t know when I moved Poche to water culture, but they say ignorance is bliss… I found an old fishbowl that was lying around the house, dumped out the orchid bark that he had been living in, carefully cleaned his roots and plopped him in water and then I watched. Somehow he lived with few problems. I didn’t realize at the time that Poche’s transition from living in bark to living in water was just about miraculous. All I did was to remove all of the media from his roots and fill his bowl about 1/2 full with tap water. Note: I now use filtered water only.
Three months later, Poche was still doing well so I decided to move Chandebise as well. As I recall, his move to water wasn’t terribly difficult, although his transition was not as easy as Poche’s. By now, I was hooked on orchids and couldn’t be trusted in the floral section of the grocery store or Home Depot. It was with these later orchids that I learned about the things that could go wrong, and just how bad those things could be. Fortunately, I’ve only lost two of my orchids and I currently have eight that are healthy and living their best lives in water.
So why do I grow my orchids in water culture? The main reason is because I like being able to see the health and hydration of the roots and plant. Is it necessary? Absolutely not, but I do think the orchids in water are pretty.
I’m assuming that if you’re still reading, you might be interested in learning how to grow an orchid in water culture. Let me start by giving you this disclaimer: There really isn’t a one size fits all method of growing orchids in water culture. In retrospect, there was no real transition to water for my orchids, some were stressed pretty badly at times, and two did not make it. My point in saying this is not to discourage you from trying water culture, but to let you know that there are risks and you might not want to try this on your favorite orchid or an orchid that’s been in the family for years.
I’ve been growing orchids in water culture for around two years, and I’m still learning. So it will take some time, but I’ve bought a new orchid and will take you through the process from beginning to success. My goal with this orchid is to do this with as little stress on the plant as possible. This takes time, and in the end, I’m talking about a couple months before an orchid is ready for routine care because one doesn’t simply move an orchid to water culture, instead, one must transition the orchid to water culture. I hope you’ll follow along on what I’m calling my “Starbuck” series so you, too, can learn how to grow orchids in water.
my Plants 
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