To those of us who live in crowded cities where a window box or terrarium is the only means we have of indulging a desire for green and growing plants, orchids offer special attractions. Indoor gardeners say that a house full of plants is soothing. This is certainly true of the frequently grasslike and gracefully arching foliage of orchids. But orchids in flower are wondrous beyond all other plants. Ordinary house plants have an air of quiet respectability. Orchids bring to your home an exotic touch, a hint of faraway lands.

Many orchids are perfectly adaptable house guests. At least six members of the orchid family have been grown in the windows of European homes for almost eighty years without any more attention than is ordinarily given to Saintpaulias and begonias. Sir Joseph Paxton initiated the practice, and the orchid hunter George Ure Skinner made a regular habit of it. In spite of cold winters—their living rooms heated only by small coal fires—their successes were phenomenal. They kept their plants healthy and in bloom for many months merely by watering them slightly everyfew days, sponging the leaves once a week to keep off dust, and exposing them to a good deal of light.

Unfortunately, most of our modern homes are unhealthy for orchids. Unhealthy, in fact, for most plants, and even for us. The air is too dry; in many cases—winter and summer—it is nearly as dry as the air over the Sahara Desert. Our grandmothers, whose house plants succeeded so admirably, had wood or coal hearth fires on which they kept steaming kettles of water, and they had steamy kitchens— both conducive to plant growth. We have radiators and dry kitchens—both fatal to plants. Nevertheless, the wise choice of a room, a good selection of a window, a tin tray of water or water-soaked asbestos, several pieces of lath, and any room can be adapted to grow a few orchids.

The room you select must be well lighted and amply ventilated. Size is not an important consideration if the window is large. In the long run, light is the limiting factor in indoor gardening. The healthiest plants, common or exotic, are always found in the largest and best-lighted window.

A window on the south side of your house is ideal. It gets a full eight to twelve hours of sunlight. Sun on windows on the east and west rarely lasts longer than five hours, and west windows receive an intense light which may prove harmful. North windows rarely have enough light. Orchids should normally receive ten or more hours of mellow light.

As sunlight becomes brighter in summer, a muslin or close-net curtain is drawn across south and west windows from midday to late afternoon in order to protect orchids from direct light. In winter, although drapes are not desirable for diffusing light, they are needed. At night when frost, snow, and ice chill windowpanes, curtains are drawn to protect orchids from the cold radiations of the glass. Each morning, as soon as the sun warms the windowpanes, curtains are drawn back in order that plants may have full benefit from the available sunlight. East windows, receiving only morning sun, rarely need to be shaded.

TERRARIUMS

Glassed Wall Inset; Bell Glass; Aquarium; Five-gallon Bottle

Our grandmothers covered their plants at night with newspaper cones or placed folded newspapers against the windows. This is still an excellent practice. Few materials have a better insulating value than newspaper. It may be less laborious to keep orchid plants on a movable table. Move the plants away from the cold windows at night, push them back in the morning. One of the most successful ideas devised by an amateur's ingenuity is the plant tea table. Any tea table that is set on casters can be used. On top of the table place decorative trays filled with moist gravel. Set the potted plants on slats above the gravel. That is all there is to it, providing the gravel is kept continuously moist.

In very cold sections of the country a plant table may have removable glass sides and top which can be set up over the plants. The table may be further improved by using water instead of gravel in the trays. Into the water dunk a flat aquarium heating unit, and plug it into a wall socket on cold nights and days. Water evaporation will be faster and the air will be kept a bit warmer.

WINDOW BOX

If a movable table is not desirable, aquarium heaters and chicken-brooder heating units can be adapted to window ledges and shelves. Small heat lamps with reflectors can be installed at the top of a window. The lamps can be controlled by a thermostat and they will heat and light the window at periods when orchids need stimulation. Such supplemental light is beneficial on cloudy and rainy days and is sufficient in intensity to benefit orchids. Sometimes orchids have been placed in trays of moist gravel set above steam radiators with excellent results. Gas heaters in a home are not always practicable; they dry the air, combustion is often incomplete, and the gaseous products often are poisonous to plants. Before you use a gas heater, check with your gas company. Use only natural gas.

The requirement of orchids for continuously fresh and buoyant air is not so difficult to meet in winter as it sounds. Open any window except that in which the orchids are kept. Don't open the window enough to create a draft or chill the room, but just enough to keep the room from being stuffy. In summer most windows will be open anyway, and all that matters then is to protect plants from dry, hot drafts.

The atmosphere in most rooms usually lacks sufficient moisture. Too little humidity, or too much, makes a room equally uncomfortable for you and for your plants. Have you ever noticed in a gas- or steam-heated room how dry your skin gets? You are being dehydrated. That's what happens to plants. Conversely, in a humid room you get a sticky feeling; you can't breathe, can't perspire. That too, in a sense, is what happens to plants. You and the plants need a compromise. A room in which that dry feeling is barely taken away, yet you don't feel sticky, is just right for you and most plants, and almost right for orchids. Old-fashioned people kept a kettle of water heating in the kitchen, or warming on the living-room radiator during winter to humidify the air. Today it is possible to purchase in electric-appliance shops a small humidifier that can be attached to gas or steam radiators. All that is necessary is to add water from time to time; the rest is automatic. Water is slowly evaporated to keep the room comfortable for you and your plants. You may still find it necessary to syringe orchids once or twice daily unless dark skies or low temperature make it unnecessary. Maintenance of sufficient humidity near orchid plants is usually the critical element in most home culture.

Another satisfactory method is to make a permanent window installation, concentrating in that area the few pieces of equipment which will automatically maintain satisfactory plant conditions, except on hot days when syringing is a necessary aid. Set on the window ledge a shelf that will hold trays twelve inches wide. Border the shelf with four-inch to eight-inch painted sides, if you want to be fancy. Fill the trays with water, moist gravel, wet asbestos, or any material that will absorb water and slowly evaporate it. Place a few pieces of redwood battens their own width apart on the trays. On the battens set your pots of orchids. Evaporation from the trays usually will concentrate enough atmospheric moisture around the plants to keep them well. Yet, a few feet away from the plants the moisture is not noticeable, and it is never detrimental to furniture or wallpaper. In steam-heated houses, though, and in dry sections of the country, it is always advisable to syringe orchids regularly.
 
The most disastrous effect of house culture on orchids really comes from sudden changes of temperature. It is disastrous because you can't see its damage to plants before it is too late. Orchids are accustomed to gradual changes of temperature, never sudden or radical changes. If the temperature drops or rises 10° in a few minutes, orchids cannot adjust themselves to it. It interrupts their growth cycle, makes them anemic and susceptible to rot. The effect is comparable to that on a person sitting in a steam-heated room and subjected to an intermittent cold draft. Sickness is often the result.

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LAELIOGATTLEYA SNOWDRIFT VAR. RIVERMONT

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LAELIOGATTLEYA GOLD GLEAM VAR. MARTIE EVEREST

ORCHID WINDOW

Cleanliness, too, is vitally important. Orchids are the cleanest of all plants. Under natural conditions they are bathed daily by rains which wash away insects and dust; then they are dried quickly by the sun and wind. The same routine is expedient in culture. Keep your orchids clean. Once or twice a week wipe the leaves with a soft, damp cloth to remove the dust and grime that clogs the stomata. A plant will die as surely as a man if its pores are prevented from functioning. Once in a while add several drops of a vegetable oil emulsion insecticide to a pint of lukewarm water and use the mixture for sponging the foliage. It will give leaves a decorative waxy burnish and also helps to minimize insect pests. Never use an emulsion made with mineral oil. It may injure orchids.

A bay window is so easily adapted to orchid culture that, if you possess one, as well as the urge for orchids, you have no reasonable excuse for not becoming an orchidist. An old garden magazine published a hundred years ago records that "a gentleman of London used his sitting-room window, six feet long by three feet wide, to grow orchids." He ran pipes through it, warmed presumably by gas. In this miniature greenhouse he grew, with liberal supplies of atmospheric water, "twenty-five of the most exotic species of orchids."

Few commercial orchid growers are convinced that regular bay windows can be made suitable at all times for orchid culture. Most bay windows are too high to permit heavy concentrations of humidity. Low, long windows are more practicable. The best orchid greenhouses are narrow, low, and long. Yet nearly all growers agree on the advantages of bay windows properly equipped. Some go so far as to offer portable bay windows which may be bolted over a double-hung window. Others offer plans for the construction of orchid windows.

BAY WINDOW GREENHOUSE

Prefabricated bay windows are so inexpensive that it is inadvisable for the average person to build one unless carpentering is a hobby. The portable bay windows come in standard sizes, equipped with plant racks, heating elements, and ventilators. They will fit the architectural design of any house.

On the other hand, you may already have a bay window that you would like to turn into a greenhouse. It can be done for about $25, or less if you are handy with tools and lumber. Select, if possible, a bay window that faces south.
 
It should have preferably not less than fifteen cubic feet of air space. A foot below the window ledge build a solid platform of wood, insulating it on top with felt tar paper. Construct a tin tray about two inches deep, to fit the platform. Fill it with one-fourth inch gravel or cinders.

On a level with the window ledge build a plant rack of redwood battens set their own width apart in order to permit free passage of air up and around the orchids. A few inches below the plant rack hang a circular tin plate about eighteen inches in diameter. The plate acts as a baffle, dispersing the heat from whatever heat source you may use. A brooder heater is good, but a 100-watt carbon bulb will do as well, if you paint it black or can mask the light.

Fit cupboard-type doors from floor level to the plant rack to hide your humidifying and heating equipment. Above them set in French doors flush with the walls of the room. Hang thin muslin draw curtains over the bay window and drapes over the French doors. And that's all there is to it.

Humidity is maintained by adding tap water to the tray as needed. Ventilation is obtained by opening the French doors during the day, closing them at night. Elaborate bay windows may have outside bottom and top ventilators which are operated as those in a greenhouse would be. Heating, when necessary, can be made automatic by installing a thermostat near the top of the window and connecting it to the heating unit. A small 50-watt lamp and reflector at the top of the bay window will provide supplemental light and help you show off your orchids at night to envious friends.

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