Growing areas can accommodate from just one to many orchids. However, an orchid plant placed in isolation, with nothing around it to stimulate growth, will not succeed. A barren windowsill can be likened to a desert, until a few adaptations are made to make the area habitable. A narrow windowsill may have to be widened by attaching a wooden shelf to give more space and increase the growing area. This area can be used for humidity trays.
These are available from garden centres and other outlets in many shapes and sizes with differing designs. The humidity tray is a shallow tray without holes, because it needs to hold water. Place a quantity of expanded clay pellets in the tray to about 2.5cm (1 in), or just below the rim, and partially fill with water. Now you have created a base for your orchids to stand on where they will receive a small amount of moisture from the evaporating water rising around them; at the same time, the plants will be standing above the water, so their roots will be kept wet but not immersed. You can have as many humidity trays as you have room for, standing a few orchids on each and allowing sufficient room between them for air to circulate.
Place a few smaller pots of ferns or other green plants in between the orchids; these can be kept wetter than the orchids by plunging them directly into the pellets. The green plants, which may be colourful busy Lizzies (Impatiens) or any of the smallgrowing creeping plants that will not become so large as to overgrow the orchids, will do much to create a good growing environment, increasing the humidity around the orchids and generally brightening up the setting.
Orchids placed on the floor would need to stand on concrete or tiles, which can be wetted without harming any installations, and some means of channelling away surplus water would need to be set up.
Alternatively, where the floor area is carpeted, the plants would be better housed on the sort of staging used in greenhouses. Here the same humidity tray system can be put into place to give the orchids the all important microclimate, with some moisture rising around them. It should also be possible to spray the foliage without worrying about surplus water.
Wherever there is sufficient light and warmth, orchids will grow, provided a suitable growing area is set aside for them. Cellar culture is practised in countries such as Canada, where excessively cold winters prevent the use of greenhouses.
The cellar, which is usually heated, is adapted to grow orchids by the installation of electric lighting and benching with humidity trays, and a system of catching the surplus water to be recycled or drained away.
This system works well in these colder countries, where the orchids are brought out for the summer and grown in the conventional way. In other situations, however, this system is not worth the cost and effort involved in converting an area, and the plants grown in this manner rely more upon their summer growth to keep them surviving through the winter.
