One sunny, wonderful, bright, new day, you’re checking on your orchid. Suddenly, you notice something on your prized plant. It’s on the flower stem, but it’s not a flower – it has green leaves. It even has roots growing on it! It may even have a stem of its own. What on Earth is this?!
A congratulation is in order – you’re becoming a grandparent! Your Orchid is growing a “keiki” – a baby, as it translates to from Hawaiian. Because that’s basically what it is – a tiny new orchid.
So, what do you do now? Well, it depends on a couple of things. Let’s go through those.
1) Where is the Keiki Placed?
Your keiki is in one of two places – on one of the flower stems, or on the base, where the green leaves grow. If it’s on one of the stems, I’ll explain what you can do after all these questions. If it’s on the base, just let it be – you can’t remove it, as it is very likely to kill both keiki and mother plant.
2) How Big is the Keiki?The general rule is that the roots have to be at least an inch to one and a half inch long before you can do anything.
If these things are cleared, then, you can do one of these two things:
1) Leave the Keiki On
It will eventually grow its own stem and bloom, meaning you’ll have more blooms on the same plant!
2) Remove and Plant it
This is what I generally choose to do – first off, the mother plant then has more energy to focus on growing herself, and secondly, that means I have one more plant that I can either trade for one I don’t have, or that I can just keep. So how do you remove it safely? Follow these steps:
- Sterilize the cutting tool you wish to use. You CAN just break it off with your hands, but it has to be very loose to do so. The safest method is to cut it off with a sterilized tool.
- Cut the keiki so it has an inch or one and a half inch of stem attached to it. Leave the piece of the stem be.
- Plant the orchid in the same pot as the mother plant – the mother plant will help regulate the conditions of the potting media for the young keiki. You CAN plant it in its own pot, but it IS best to have it in the same pot as its mother plant for a while.
- Six to twelve months later, you can remove the keiki from the pot it has shared with the mother plant – you can now plant it in its own pot.
- Treat it like you treat the mother plant
Voila! You now have another orchid! 🙂 Its flowers will look exactly like the mother plant’s. How cool is that? 😀
Diary of an Orchid Addict 
