Last September, Barry Moore and I took a trip up north to visit fellow members Henk van den Berg in Maitland and Mark 'Bush Basher' Daniels in Clarence Town.

 

We first dropped in on Henk who after tea and coffee, gladly showed us around his orchid shade houses and was so generous in sharing his knowledge on how he grows his champion native orchids.

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Here are just some of the lessons we learned off Henk:

 

• In nature, most native orchids grow on the branches of trees and are exposed to gentle breezes most of the time. Henk has fans running inside his orchid houses to maintain that airflow around his plants.

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• When using composted pine bark mixed with charcoal, make sure to re-pot with a fresh mix every 2 – 3 years. Charcoal absorbs salts and over time this can be detrimental to your plants.

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• The floor of Henk’s orchid houses are covered in a thick layer of river pebbles. He wets this down in summer to increase humidity and help cool down his shade houses.

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• Spanish moss (tillandsia usneoides) is hung on the sides of the orchid benches. This is also wetted down to help maintain humidity.

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• Once a year, you can make a lime water mixture (1g dolomite lime per litre of water) and apply this to your plants to reduce the acidity of your mix. Don’t worry about the fine bits that don’t dissolve in the water. Just let this settle down to the bottom of the container. The water will have enough dissolved CaCO3 & MgCO3 to do the job.

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• Aside from using a liquid chemical fertiliser (e.g. Peters or Alan's Merri-Fert), you can make a tea out of chicken or cow manure and apply this once a month during the growing season. Although Henk didn’t tell us how to make this tea, other orchid growers have told me that they place the manure inside a hessian bag and leave it in a 50 – 70 litre container of water for a few weeks until the water turns dark. They then mix a litre of this “tea” with 10 litres of water and use it on their orchids.

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Native orchids grown the Henk van den Berg way!