Mounting Vanda

If you grow Vanda long enough it becomes a problem of how to hang an extremely large one.

The Vanda begin to fall to the side and we tie them with whatever will not cut the leaves. Then the wires rust and break and what do we do?


We began to attach them to thick wooden mounts. We use grapevine because of their beautiful colors but any 'hard' wood will do such as cypress, oak, cedar etc. Soft woods like pine deteriorate too fast.

Removing the plant from a rotting basket is actually very easy.


The cheap wooden baskets used for Vanda do not last more than about 5 years. Do not worry about breaking a few roots.







Plants this big and healthy can lose roots and never miss them.
 

We mount them two different ways. Our most unique way is to hang the Vanda down. After all, what do you do with a five foot Vanda with 7 feet of roots. Most people do not have 15 foot ceilings to hang them with  some growing room, and then you would have flowers way above your head.  We start with the plant removed from the basket on a table.  Then we place the wood we chose and orientate it for mounting. 

 Here we chose to place the plant on top of the knurled wood.  


When we began to attach the Vanda to the wood and pull the twist tie tight, the wood moved to the side.  It often is necessary to tie it through holes in the wood to keep it in position.  It looked so much better we left it..Compare the mounted Vanda to the one in the basket.
 


We then mounted the second one. and added a third we had done before.  Notice on the third one in the middle how a Vanda will start to grow up from any position in which it was mounted.  The curling of the plant and the upright facing flowers are the look we intended to achieve.


By hanging them this way we have many more years of growing space and an attractive display.

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Added 5/15/2012

I should have noted in this tutorial that since Vanda grow on tree branches, they will eventually get tall enough that wind and rain will knock them over and they will grow in this manner naturally.  What I did not know when I wrote this tutorial is that the increased light at the junction of the roots with the stem will cause increased keiki growth. 

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Our second way of mounting arose out of the need to make a Vanda, which has lost its lower leaves, look better. We mount them normally but the large piece of grapevine adds attraction to the bare section.   Roots will attach tot he wood and eventually cover the entire branch.