Look what my cleaner has done 😲😲😲

[Lavenderhillslob]

No AIBUs about actually having a cleaner, please.

This is my orchid. It had flowers on yesterday. Now it's nicely.........trimmed

Wtf?

That stem is dead, yes, but the plant is not. It will throw up another shortly. I have to say some of mine take ages and I feel like giving up on them...

It won't throw out a stork but it will throw out a stalk!

I didn't like to say anything, stick...

But yes she needs hanging telling if she really has trimmed it.

Course I'm not overeacting.

I give up with orchids. They're beautiful when flowering but people keep giving me them and I kill them and feel guilty.

They're usually only about £8 or something though, which is about the same as two bunches of supermarket flowers - so if they last 3-4 weeks, I tend to feel I've got my money's worth.

lovely tiles...

From the look of it, your orchid was about to drop its blooms anyway. Its stems look very bleaccccch (a horticultural term, obviously). Cutting back like this will actually help it to put out new flower spikes.

Give it some weak orchid food once a week, letting it drain well between times. You should see new growth within a couple of weeks.

(BTW - if I was her, I would have taken the whole lot down to just above a node, so that there was only one stalk.)

it used to sit in a clear plastic container (basically a lunch box ☺) in the pot that it came, in a lot of water

Nooooooo!

Orchids hate to sit in water. A good soak one a week, at most then let it thoroughly drain before putting it back int its decorative container.

You're giving me orchid related palpitations here!

Cut the dead stem. The leaves are good and healthy so it may grow another stem. Keep it on a windowsill over a radiator (so it gets heat during the winter) but not a window that gets direct sunlight

Cut the stem? The main stem?? Are you sure? How much? Down to the roots? Oh help, I'm having a panic.

If the flowers were about to drop you can stimulate further flowering by cutting the flowering stem back, cutting back to ~1" above the nearest leaf bract below the flowering section. Is that what's done? It has to be done just before or at the point the last flower is about to drop to work.

Not down to the roots - just above a node (those slightly bumpy bots on the stem).

Trust us - possibly some of us are doctors.

*BITS, not bots

Oh the shame

"1" above the nearest leaf bract below the flowering section"

This is the kind of talk that has me bewildered in the garden... Can't wrap my head around that.

Orchids are one of those plants that you fart in it's general direction and all the flowers fall off..so your cleaner probably just swept them up.

But bwohahahahah if she had actually cut them off. That would make her some sort of cleaning ninja.

Mine go like that. I just cut the bit of brown stem at the top off, repot them each spring in a next size up clear pot in orchid compost and Water them now and again. Occasionally they get some orchid feed. My best one one has over 100 flowers and my worst about 10. Your cleaner probably just moved it and the blooms fell off - looks like there's new ones coming from the green shoots, so no need to panic!