"Happy Orchid" by Sara Rittershausen

This is a pretty little book. I have a few Phalaenopsis orchids that I’ve managed to keep alive for several years, but I have not discovered the secret of getting them to bloom regularly. I feel lucky and excited when just one of them blooms over the winter. So when I saw this book I was even more excited--I hoped it might teach me how to get all of my orchids to bloom every year! 

Unfortunately the majority of this book is composed of brief entries on many different varieties of orchids, and at this point I’m not really interested in expanding my collection beyond my easy-care moth orchids. But it was fun to look at all the pictures. The shapes and colors of these flowers get pretty wild. 

I did take a few notes that may help, though (like, maybe I need to get some high potash fertilizer to encourage blooming). Hopefully sometime within the next month or so I’ll see a little baby flower stem poke out its tiny, pale green, mittened hand. Maybe there will even be more than one!