deflasking

Deflasking & Compots

If you are patient, buying orchids in flask is an inexpensive way to obtain rare species to share with friends, or see the variety among offspring of a man-made hybrid. Flasks come in different sizes from mini's holding a dozen or so plantlets to maxi's with a hundred or more seedlings. Seed-raised orchids begin life in a sterile flask growing on a media of agar and nutrients. Eventually they become too crowded in the bottle. By this time they are of a size where they can survive in the outside world. The transition from a sterile flask with constant humidity to the cruel outside world with bacteria and fungus spores can be traumatic for the baby orchids. Some growers have no trouble succeeding with the out-of-flask experience by giving the plantlets no special care whatsoever, while others have high mortality rates despite constant care. It is common practice to move seedlings from flask to "community pot", the tiny plants seem to appreciate each other's company. A community pot, or compot, may contain 5-10 plants or 20-30 depending on the size of the plants. A 3 to 4 inch pot is about the perfect size for a community pot.

Many different containers are used for flasking orchids. You may find orchids flasked in baby food jars, 500ml Ehrlenmeyer flasks, milk bottles or any other container that seals tightly and can be sterilized. The techniques demonstrated here are for containers with a narrow mouth and involve breaking the bottle. Alternate approaches using metal wires or trying to dissolve the agar in warm water are unsatisfactory. We have found that trying to remove seedlings through a narrow mouth bottle bruises plant tissue and results in a high rate of mortality. Obviously, seedlings in wide mouth jars can simply be lifted from the container.

Regardless of what type bottle the seedlings are in, the process of de-flasking orchid seedlings and moving them into a community pot is the same. First we remove the seedlings. Then we remove any remaining agar by rinsing the seedlings in tub of fresh water (we also show you an "agar on" method). Next we allow the plants to dry, then we pot them in a community pot with a fine potting media where they will stay for a year or two before being moved into their own pot. Some commercial growers eliminate the community pot altogether and grow flasklings in flats of sphagnum. For the hobbyist though, a community pot is more practical. There are fine-textured potting mixes that are available especially for compots and seedling. It is also easy to make your own using fine tree fern, fir bark or peat moss mixed with fine charcoal or perlite.

Once the seedlings become crowded in the compot, it is time to move them into their own individual two or three inch pots. If the roots are very entangled, a water bath can help seperate the seedlings. From this point on, the orchids will be moved into increasingly larger pots with coarser potting media until they reach maturity and flower.