Carter & Holmes Orchids

From 2010-04 Carter and Homes Orchids

We took an enjoyable day trip from the Barnyard RV Park to Carter & Holmes Orchids. This orchid nursery is about 3 miles outside Newberry, SC, which is about 40 miles north of Columbia.

Carter & Holmes is a small privately owned business. They have been growing orchids for 65 years starting right after WWII. They ship worldwide and have hundreds of varieties.

We were allowed to just wander through the greenhouses. We encountered delightful employees who stopped their work to explain how orchids are grown and what they were doing at the moment. This lady was in the process of selecting plants to be shipped to a man in Chile who is trying to establish the largest private collection of orchids in the world.

From 2010-04 Carter and Homes Orchids

I was surprised to learn how hardy some varieties of orchids are, especially Phalaenopsis.

From 2010-04 Carter and Homes Orchids

From 2010-04 Carter and Homes Orchids

From 2010-04 Carter and Homes Orchids

This is the variety you most often see for sale at places like Lowe’s or Publix in their flower sections. The blooms can last up to 4 months and do well in a typical household environment. They are an excellent plant if you have allergies since they produce no airborne pollen. Orchids depend upon bees, insects or hummingbirds for pollination. We bought a small one that had 3 blooms and 3 buds. You only water the plants every 4-5 days. After a few waterings over a couple of weeks all 3 buds had opened. All the blooms were still beautiful when we got ready to leave. We gave the plant to a lady in the front office of the RV park who has several other orchids at home. We were afraid we would damage the plant when packing or traveling down the road.

Carter & Holmes grows new plants from seeds or from tissue cuttings (clones). Each seed pod will produce 1,000 or so seeds. In the wild only a few will land in the right environment and survive. In the greenhouse, Carter & Holmes can germinate all 1,000. They also cross breed or hybridize new varieties. The man who does this stopped to show us 2 grains of pollen he had collected into a tiny glass vial. He was on the way to use it to pollenate with a different variety.

The seeds germinate and grow in these large vials for a year or more before being transplanted.

From 2010-04 Carter and Homes Orchids

From 2010-04 Carter and Homes Orchids

The plant we purchased was in a small 3” pot and was about 3 years old. Carter & Holmes has orchids with a wide variety of ages. The oldest was collected in the jungles of Columbia, South America in 1888.

If you are in the area, Carter & Holmes is well worth a visit. You might become “hooked” and want to bring a few orchids home to enjoy.

From 2010-04 Carter and Homes Orchids