Drooping Orchid Flowers

The orchid family includes around 30,000 species, with three to four types winning the crown as common houseplants. All orchids go through the same basic lifespan, with new growth, flowering and dormancy every year. Drooping and fading flowers are natural parts of the calendar, and signify only the end of that particular growing season. When your orchid flowers droop and fall off, take a couple of steps to alter your care and ensure new blooms this season or next.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You’ll Need:

• Pruning shears/scissors
• Orchid fertilizer

1. Cut the end off the flower stalk after the orchids fall off. Trim to just above the next lowest joint to encourage a new spike or blooms. Orchids that receive the right care during their blooming period may start new growth immediately.

2. Maintain the correct lighting and placement for orchids. These plants need bright, indirect sunlight or artificial light for eight hours a day, even when their blooming period finishes. Never put them outside or in a dark corner.

3. Water the orchid with 1 to 2 inches of water every ten days, or when their soil dries completely. Orchids prefer dry foundations with good air circulation, and suffer when they get too much water, or when they sit in standing water. Good watering practices will encourage more growth and blooming in the coming season.

4. Cut the feeding schedule to once a month. Feed the orchid in a weekly watering with water-soluble orchid fertilizer, per the directions on the fertilizer package. If the orchid begins to grow a new shoot, increase feedings to once a week to maintain the new growth.

Tips & Warnings

• Orchid leaves and stalks sometimes die after the bloom is finished. Yellowing and dying leaves do not mean that the orchid is dead; maintain care and new leaves will grow to replace the old.