Paphiopedilum: Care, Culture and Tips for Growing Paphs For Windowsill & Indoor Growers

I love Paphiopedilums but let me tell you…they grow SO SLOWLY

Perceived difficulty – Are Paphiopedilums hard to grow?

Paphs get a reputation for being difficult to grow, but then people who have mastered their care, feel they’re very easy to grow. So what is it…difficult or easy? And the answer to that depends on your expectations of the plant and your ability to provide consistent care over a long period of time.

I consider them easy NOW, but you know how I mentioned I got back into growing paphs in 2017? Before that, every paph I tried growing, I killed. I really struggled to grow them and I believe a lot of my failure then was a result of me following advice that was incomplete. What I mean by that…if you follow advice by a greenhouse grower (who has humidity over 65% and light averaging 25-50% sun)…you’re not going to have the contextual understanding about why your plants aren’t growing well in your home conditions. You have incomplete advice (based on assumptions that worked for that grower under their set of variables) and that’s what I feel I was working with. It wasn’t for my lack of trying though…I read everything I could get my hands on…I just couldn’t get them to grow well.

These days, I consider myself a “good paph grower.” Most of my paphiopedilums have been alive and in my care for at least 3-5 years. I have learned and applied knowledge consistently over the past 5 years, and contrasted that knowledge to what I had previously applied (and failed with). I am finally confident in my ability to grow this group, to the point that I’ve even started making my own paph hybrids. I am growing those from seed in flask and deflasked my first cross in early 2022.

I’ll stop tooting my horn—but I want you to understand, if you’re struggling with this genus, it’s okay—you may just need an “ah ha!” moment to shift your perspective. So, let’s break down some care tips so I can convey my experience to you, and hopefully I can help you improve your success growing paphiopedilum orchids.

Paphiopedium lowii
When I first got this plant, it was small, light stressed and I nearly lost it to crown rot within the first month. After some careful attention to watering and providing the care I’ll cover in the article below, it came through and finally bloomed 3 years later.

Expectations of Paphiopedilums

• Paphs grow slowly: young plants, they are especially slow and it may take a “seedling size” or “near blooming size” plant years to finally bloom for the first time—in extreme cases we’re talking 8 to 10 years (or longer)! Don’t be scared off though, with good culture most species can bloom within 2-4 years from seedling size. So, don’t be discouraged if your paphiopedilum is quite small. Once you achieve the first flowering, then you’ll generally get one or two new growths per year (from each previous crown), and each of those should flower at the end of their growth cycle. I generally get flowers every year once a paph has flowered for the first time. This also means a plant that has 2 existing growths may produce 2 to 4 new growths the next seasonal and you could end up with 2 to 4 inflorescence on that plant. Once you have a mature plant, they tend to size up “quickly” after that, doubling size about every year or…three. BUT…to get a paphiopedilum to flower for the first time can be a test of your patience, especially since a lot of paphs available for sale are quite small. Faster growing paphs may produce a new leaf every month or two, and new leads (pups/offshoots) can be produced as often as twice a year. Some slower-growing species may take 2 or more years to develop a mature growth, but most paphs generally fall into an annual cycle of: new growth, flower, pause, repeat.
• They spike once per growth: each new growth will spike and flower once only from the crown as that section of the plant matures. Depending on the species, the spike may put out a single flower (or pair), a series of sequentially-opening and dropping blooms, or a flush of flowers that open all at the same time. Unlike many phalaenopsis orchids, paphs will only get one inflorescence per crown and once that spike dies it will not branch and flower again until the following growth has matured and produced a new spike.
• Some Paphiopedilum flowers are fragrant: but most are not. I recommend, if you have one in flower, give it a sniff. I have had flowers that smell like alfalfa or cut grass (paph primulinum var purpurascens), or black pepper (a henryanum-rosthchildianum hybrid), and I’ve heard of some that smell like green apple or strawberries. So…just give it a sniff because you might be surprised at what you find.

Paph Delophyllum and other paphs near a South window
(which has since been “screened” to reduce the intensity in the summer)

The same paph Delophyllum a couple years later

Paphiopedilum Care – Consistency is Key

TL;DR: Paphs are great for people with a routine.

Understanding that paphs are both slow growers and that they only spike once per new growth, comes the next tricky component…Paphs need really consistent care all year. You can’t forget about them for half the year, start watering them in the spring and expect them to thrive. They grow slowly but need very consistent conditions to maintain that slow and progressive growth through the spring, summer, fall and winter. Even species that have a dry and cool winter “dormancy”, still need regular irrigation to stay hydrated.

A significant challenge for me…paphiopedilums aren’t very responsive plants. I’m used to plants really showing me when they’re happy (or sulking when they’re unhappy). Paphs however, seem like they’re always in a state of “the same” until they finally produce that flower spike. To be honest with you, if you’re expecting a validating plant that shows it’s appreciation in weeks and months…Paphs may just not be for you. You’ll measure success more in seasons, years and possibly decades, but when they do flower…wow! It’s years of commitment that’s made that happen and you may find THAT more rewarding than growing any other plant.

If you’re the type of person who frequently forgets to water your plants…don’t start with a paphiopedilum. It’s not going to go well—and I can tell you this because that’s how I started and I killed a lot of paphs. The problem: by the time you can see that a plant needs to be watered (it has withered and leathery leaves), the damage is already done; root tips may have aborted, died back, or rotted off entirely; and because the plants aren’t aggressive rooters, if you lose the few roots they do have, it’s a real challenge to get them to recover.

Watering & Hydration

Your goal is to have “moist roots, but not constantly wet or dry”…but WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??? This was so confusing for me when I started growing paphiopedilums. Understanding, “Not dry, always moist, but not wet” was especially challenging because in my dry Alberta climate, the difference between all three extremes is literally a matter of waiting 24-48 hours.

So let me help clarify this…with some watering tips

1. 1. Don’t let the roots go bone dry! There is a saying, “if the roots are dry, you should have watered yesterday”, and for me that’s was a great tip. With that context of when to water, you can carefully observe the rate that your potting mix dries-out (in your given climate, under your conditions, pot size, and media type) and then follow a pretty predictable watering schedule in the future. If you watered 5 days ago and the bark and roots are bone dry, then next time you should water on the 4th day. Tip: Using clear/transparent orchid pots really helps with this because you can see what’s happening in the pot – if you don’t see condensation between the bark media or if the roots in the middle/bottom look dry, then it’s time to water.
   2. On watering day soak the whole pot in water up to the base of the plant for at least 5 minutes. My 4.5″ pots fit perfectly in a coffee mug, so I plop the pot in and drench the media from the top until the mug is full and then I let them soak for at least a good 5-10 minutes. If your climate is especially dry (under 50% rH), then you can let them soak for them for a good 20-45 minutes without causing issues. I often let mine soak for hours…but I use a very chunky potting mix; so err on caution initially and keep your soak times to under 30 mins.
   3. Anaerobic conditions cause root rot…not water (we’ll cover this in potting media below).
   4. Calcium, nutrient deficiencies and low pH cause root rot…not water (we’ll cover this more below).
   5. When watering you want to actively irrigate and flush lots of water through the pot to help oxygenate the roots AND to waterlog the bark. When bark is saturated, it will release that moisture over the week creating a microclimate of high humidity in your pot. That means “dribble watering” is probably not as effective as it may create a bottom section that’s moist, with a top section that’s bone dry. You want to drench all the bark so the whole pot is evenly moist (allowing the shorter new roots to succeed as well as older longer ones). Soaking and flushing your pots about every 5-10 days is very helpful for keeping your roots healthy, while avoiding desiccation. Soaking the roots like this also allows your plant to rehydrate if it’s slightly dehydrated. You may need to adjust that watering cadence based on: your own climate, on the size of the pot, on the type of pot (terracotta really SUCKS water out of the potting media while plastic pots trap moisture), and on the size of the potting media. Please don’t read that and think you only need to water your paph every 10 days… if you’re using a small pot with large bark chunks and your humidity is 30%, you may need to water that plant every 2 days just to keep the roots moist.
   6. Keep roots moist longer: Once you’ve soaked and drained the potting media you can leave an additional 1/8-1/4 inch of water in the tray. I know it sounds like the cardinal sin of paphiopedilums because most care sheets are very clear about, “never soak paph roots”, but we’ve already broken that rule and I’m here to help you shift your success. Applying this nugget of advice fundamentally changed how my paphs grew…and I have both Barbara Bielecka and Neil Kim to thank for instilling that advice in me (thank you, paph gurus for sharing your insights). It’s a very powerful tip if you understand the goal—which is to keep the roots consistently moist between waterings, while also keeping them oxygenated. You only want to use enough water that it will dry up within 24-48 hours, AND initially you should pay very close attention to this practice to avoid using too much water. The goal isn’t to have the pot sitting in water all week long and if you watered on Sunday and there is still water there Wednesday morning, you should dump out what’s left and use a little less water next time. Seasonal changes may also alter your evaporation rates, so beware that what works in winter may need to be adjusted in the summer.
      • Before I started doing this, my paphs would go through spurts of roots growth in the spring/summer. However, now that they’re evenly moist all week long, I get continuous root growth for nearly the entire year.

Watering Frequency: “How often should I water my paph?” – For me, I’ve perfected a potting mix that allows me to water once per week (sometimes twice for the seedlings). For you, like I mentioned above, the frequency will depend on your potting mix, your climate, and your general lifestyle. Some people enjoy watering their plants often and they will use a chunkier media that dries quickly. I will say…if your potting media is taking more than 10 days to dry, then you may have to contend with anaerobic conditions because it could mean airflow is poor or the media has compacted—repot if in doubt.

Paph helenae growing in live moss
Despite my humidity being so low, my irrigation practice even keeps live moss thriving. If you like the look of this pot, check out my post on how to grow live moss, but to be clear in order to grow paphiopedilums well, you don’t also have to grow moss—you just need to have conditions favorable for moss (which generally means after a year or two moss tends to just pop up in your paph pots)

The same paphiopedilum helenae with a seed pod

Light – How much light do Paphiopedilums need?

Everything I read says paphs like “low light.” In my experience they like intermediate light…bright enough to encourage vibrant leaves and vigorous growth, but not HOT enough that it will burn the leaf. So what does that mean? East-facing windows with direct sun for a small portion of the morning seems to be good, or South/West windows with a sheer cloth that screens at least 50% of the sun. LED grow light are especially helpful because you can provide long hours (10-14h) of consistent low-to-moderate light, but you only need about 8-20 watts per square foot of coverage. If you really want to dive into light, I’ve written a great post on the topic as it applies not only to paphiopedilums, but all houseplants; here’s a link to Light Recommendations: PPFD (PAR) for Orchids and Houseplants.

Light requirements of different paphiopedilum types
* Please use as a general target, adjust based on how your plants perform, and use caution for each species; these are generalized targets for each group, not exact values.

• Mottled leafed (such as maudiae or delenatii) paphs: need low light, and definitely less light than multifloral paphs
  (roughly: 3-8% sun; 66–175 PAR/ppfd; or 300–800 footcandles).
• Sequential-blooming (such as primulinum, Pinocchio or glaucophyllum) & strapped-leafed (such as spicerianum or villosa) paphs: do well with low-to-moderate light levels
  (roughly: 5-15% sun; 110–330 PAR/ppfd; or 500–1,500 footcandles).
• Multi-floral paphs (such as philippinense, sanderianum and rothschildianum): moderate to bright light—you’ll want to go up to Cattleya levels in the fall during inflorescence formation
  (roughly: 10-35% sun; 220–770 PAR/ppfd; or 1,000–3,500fc).

Potting Medium – What potting mix do paphs need?

I mentioned above that paphs need good airflow at their roots. They typically grow as epiphytes (on trees with their roots covered in live moss) or lithophytes (on rock with their roots also covered in live moss), but many are terrestrial and grow in a mix of leaf litter, decaying forest bits, rock and again…moss. What all of these will typically have in common is that they are water-retentive but well draining (not dense, muddy or compact), and no matter what, they get rained on often—with many species coming from places that have seasonal monsoons where it rains daily for weeks or months at a time! Your potting media needs to retain water but also allow for drainage and airflow too, this is so the roots don’t choke and rot.

My recommended media: I use a baseline blend and I’ve been tinkering with it for a few years now. It’s roughly 50% bark to 50% rock (pumice or large perlite), with a top-dressing of sphagnum moss around the base of the plant. The sphagnum helps keep the base of the plant moist (where new roots start) and it slows evaporation a bit, but it’s only a thin layer of about 1/8-1/4″. For bark I prefer Orchiata (pine bark) because it lasts longer and retains water more reliably than fir bark (which can fragment and get soggy as it ages faster than pine bark). If I have horticultural grade charcoal available, I’ll also add that in place of some of the rock (up to 5% of the total media ratio).

Photo of orchid media: perlite & orchid bark

Additional potting media tips:

• • You can optionally also add a small amount of peat moss or fragmented sphagnum moss to the bark/rock media if you’re finding the potting media just dries too fast—but no more than 5% and again, if the media is staying moist for more than 10 days, you definitely should repot and not use this option.
  • You can read more about paphiopedilum potting mixes here.

When to repot paphiopedilums? This is a great question…most people will tell you to repot paphs often…as much as every year. I only repot every 2… to 4  years *awkward face*. However, I use alkaline water (which means the potting media doesn’t get acidic because the pH is constantly buffered up by the calcium in my tap water), and at least 50% of my potting mix is rock (which gives structure and doesn’t facilitate compaction as the organic ingredients decay). So…to be safe, you should possibly repot annually (just be careful as paph roots break easily as they are less flexible than other orchids). If you’re going to repot less frequently, then I strongly recommend using a well-draining potting mix with more inert additives like we just covered, and definitely consider adding oyster shell to prevent acidification of your media. Also, repot frequently enough to avoid pot-bound plants; if the roots circle the inside of the pot too much, they can create a barrier and set future root growth back. Make sure your plant has enough space to expand roots but not overpot it to the point the media takes too long to dry out.

Paphiopedilum roots on repotting day
Freshly repotted w/ a top-dressing of sphagnum moss

Fertilizer – How to fertilize Paphiopedilums

As with most orchids, fertilize “weakly, weekly” (which means about 1/4-1/2 strength the recommended dose – for paphs it’s even better to tread closer to 1/8 the recommended does). Some paphs are known to be sensitive to salts and unfortunately by the time you know something is wrong, the plant is already severely stressed.

• • Synthetic feed: I mentioned I use tap water for my paphs and it’s alkaline (7.5-8.3pH w/ 200-250ppm total dissolved salts) so I use 1/8tsp to 1/4tsp of MSU orchid fertilizer per gallon (4L) of water. After a feed, I’ll follow the next two waterings with just water (which flushes and removes the old fertilizer). I don’t think synthetic fertilizers are always as complete as we’d like them to be, so I also highly recommend using organic fertilizer in addition to synthetic ferts…
  • Organic fertilizer for paphiopedilum: 2-3 times per year (at spring, early summer, and when I repot a plant), I add a bit of organic fertilizer to the potting mix. Organic fertilizer is generally not water soluble and basically breaks down in the potting media over time, releasing nutrients. If you follow Ed’s Orchids on YouTube, he also does this and his plants are amazingly healthy. If you haven’t checked out his channel, you should, it’s a great resource for paph care in general. The organic fertilizer I use is called, “Gaia Green’s All Purpose 4-4-4″ and it has bat guano, bloodmeal, rock dust, oyster shell, and a bunch of other goodies. If you don’t have access to this product, seek out bloodmeal, oyster shell, and rock dust. Bloodmeal provides nitrogen, oyster shell offers a pH buffer with calcium, and rock dust provides minerals from pulverized rock. If you’re going to use organic fertilizer…ONLY USE A TINY TINY BIT. like a small pinch per pot. As it breaks down, nutrients are released, but if you use too much, you can throw your pot media pH out of whack and kill all of your roots. I know this is true, because I’ve seen people do it! So literally less than 1/8tsp per 6″ pot…just a pinch for 4.5” pots.
  • Calcium & pH: This topic is particularly important with paphs and I believe the main reason most people struggle with brown and black rot is related to a calcium deficiency in the plant or from potting media that has become too acidic. You see, many paphs and slipper orchids come from habitats that are high in calcium carbonate or are specifically alkaline growing among serpentine ultramafic rock. They are native to limestone regions and mineral rich soils of mountain ranges, where things like calcium, iron and magnesium are more abundantly available than they are in other habitats. Plants adapted to calcium-rich conditions like this will rely on those specific conditions (including not-acidic soils) to grow best, build robust cell walls, resist pathogens, absorb nutrients, and ultimately out-perform competing plants in the same habitat. What makes orchids resilient is their ability to grow in really unique places like the side of limestone cliff in a crack between boulders, or on the side of a tree in thick moss that covers the bark. Consider adding a small amount of oyster shell to your potting media if you’re using “pure water” like rainwater, RO water, or if your tap water is low in minerals or even slightly acidic (<7pH). This will help prevent a pH dive if there is any decay happening in your pot (like as wood or sphagnum moss breaks down). If you have a plant that is constantly getting brown or black rot, definitely add oyster shell to your potting media, and understand you may not see positive change until the following season when the new growth has been built with the calcium-rich conditions you’ve provided. That means, you’ll have to watch active infections closely and be extra careful about preventing the spread of fungal or bacterial infections. Calcium is non-mobile, so cell walls that were made in a deficient state will stay deficient.
    • Where to get oyster shell? Pet stores will carry it in the bird section and you can probably find it online on Amazon in the pet section.
    • Looking for more information on this topic? Read, “Calcicolous Slipper Orchids” by Tony Budrovich
  • Combating black & brown rot in paphs: If you have a plant with an active fungal or bacterial infection, applying Dragon’s Blood (sap from Croton urucurana) directly to the infection site, has been shown to help stop and control future infections. It may also help to perforate holes around the outside edge of the infection to dry out tissue and prevent the infection from spreading—you can also apply Dragon’s blood to these holes, after the holes have dried.

Other Paphiopedilum Care Requirements

Generally speaking some other tidbits to be aware of that may influence your success: some species are warm growers, others are cool growers; some require very bright light and grow fast, while others are very slow growers and cannot tolerate bright light. You really need to research each individual species and pursue the ones best fit to your climate and conditions, and then tweak the requirements for each type you grow. All of that said…I grow all of my paphs pretty much the same way—so my opinion is that generally there is some core knowledge that can make you broadly successful with these orchids.

Paph tigrimum – a cold-to-cool growing species
This species can be a challenge to grow if your climate is constantly over 30C

That covers my paphiopedilum care sheet. I think I’ve covered the core nuggets of information that helped push me past the general care sheets. If you’re on the fence about trying your first paph…just take the leap. You may kill the first couple, but that’s how you learn and if you want a better chance, stick to hybrids which tend to be easier to grow because they’re less specific about their care. Paph Delophyllum, Deperle, and bulldog paphs are very popular and are known to be easy to grow; same with hybrids of paph spicerinaum, lowii, and villosum. And with that…I wish you good luck! Below are some photos of my collection if you’re still looking for a bit more…