Orchid newbie tip 2 - keep track of your orchids

It seems to me that the only thing that comes close to the fun of having an orchid collection is shopping for yet one more orchid. With a small group of phalaenopsis, it was easy to mentally track our purchases. Myqhi knew what he had. If we saw a phalaenopsis we liked, the only question was: Can we afford it?

However, as Myqhi's orchid collection expanded, there was a new question to answer: Do we already have it? It became increasingly difficult to remember which orchids we had already purchased, so Myqhi decided to keep an organized record of his orchids.

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One way to keep track of your orchids is to use a databaseSince I was accustomed to working with databases, I built a small database for him to use.
display bigger photo (~600 px wide; 143 KB).

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Orchid newbie tip 2 - keep track of your orchids (continued from top)

I hope it is obvious you don't have to use a database to keep track of your orchids. If your brain will hold the information, terrific! If your brain starts to leak, a spiral notebook and a pen should be good enough for a smaller collection. If you find yourself wishing you could sort the information or somehow group things on the fly, then you'll probably be better off with a spreadsheet or database.

General data collected for each orchid

To get you started, here is some of the information Myqhi keeps track of:

  • Orchid name and cross
  • Year of purchase
  • Vendor
  • For each blooming season: Number and size of flowers, number of spikes/buds
  • Photos of the orchid in bloom
  • Potting media

As you can see, the information Myqhi keeps about each orchid is fairly basic. The data is used to prevent unintentional duplicate purchases and to track the overall health of the entire collection. With a written record, we don't just have a feeling about how things are going. We can quickly count the number of orchids that didn't bloom this year or (sadly) the ones that died.

The more orchids you have, the more important a written record will become.

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