Flower Gardens

» Cottage_Garden - Orchid Seed Pod

Hi Mark! That is very cool. First off you have a little time to think about this and decide what to do.

Before harvesting the seeds, you have to wait until the seeds are mature. This can take say three months or up to a year depending on what kind of orchid you are growing. (Here is a table showing pod times, from Sam Fifer.)

Then you have a choice, whether to try to start them from the still-green pod or wait until the pod actually splits open on its own.

Although it sounds a bit intimidating to start the seeds yourself at home, sending them to a lab would not really solve the problem because the little baby orchids have to be grown in flasks for months, and eventually have to be moved up to larger flasks. So you would still have the same sterile conditions/equipment needs.

Having said all that, you also need to think about what you are trying/hoping to achieve with the seeds. By that I mean, how serious is this?

If you are hybridizing and have a breeding program going, then in the long run you should probably figure out how to do this yourself -- more economical and also you will probably give your seeds the best care rather than having someone else do it for you.

If you are a casual home orchid grower for fun and just happen to have a seedpod and want to see what happens, then why not fool around with it and see if you can devise a set up at home. If nothing else it would be pretty interesting to try.

The other thing to keep in mind is that orchids take a really long time to bloom from seed. Say, three to five years would be typical but ten years is not all that unusual. So... all in all this is not an easy thing to do.

I've got links to a couple of sets of instructions on how to do this at home that you may find interesting in considering the options. I'll add them in another post.

-- posted by Cottage_Garden