20-20-20

[KingKong]

The biggest issues I have encountered growing has never and I mean never been nutrient related.

I mean sure I have burnt roots, I have fed too little, the PH has been off causing nutrient lock out, I've suffered magnesium deficiency, calcium deficiency, Nitrogen deficiency but none have been my biggest issues.

It is easy to worry about it and fuss and there is a lot to know but essentially all you need to know is that a balanced Fertilizer is best.

A lot of companies have lower P values and they will justify this by saying a plant needs more N or they don't need as much P or something else, the truth is P is the most expensive Nutrient so if they can come up with some marketing reason that sounds plausible, like Plants need more K in flowering or anything else to justify saving a bit of cost they will add that.

Balanced is still best however I am especially dubious of the exactly balanced 5-5-5 or 10-10-10 or 20-20-20 fertilizers. Usually they are not very balanced when it comes to the micro nutrients and again if the company can save cost, they have already declared it is balanced by stating 20-20-20 then they can leave away calcium and magnesium and these are arguably more important than the macro nutrients as the plant cannot absorb macro nutrients without micro nutrients. So analyze everything! You want at least 3% Calcium and ideally 1.5% Magnesium.

The best balanced Fertilizers are the ones designed for orchids. The rain mix is a very complete fertilizer.

Anything designed for soil is a no go. Soil fertilizers cannot be absorbed by orchids - they need to be broken down by soil bacteria into an absorbable form first so using soil fertizilers is a sure fire way to built up salt residue.

Once you have taken all that into consideration and you are still interested in making changes that are not proven in any way to make much difference then start expereimenting with different NPK values but avoid extremes like 30-10-10 - Fertilizers like these are designed for a specific purpose like Grasses and will be too off balance for most other plants

(too much of one Nutrient will lock out another Nutrient and so on)

Also PS: These nutrient companies and there are thousands of them all have their own team of scientists that have come up with their formulas, they are constantly doing tests to improve our understanding, we should be discussing which fertilizers are better than others, not trying to replicate the job these scientists do trying to find the right ratio - they have greenhouses and years dedicated to it - I don't see why every Tom Dick and Harry always wants to find their own ratio. It's not like we go to the petrol station, get out our lab kit and start measusing what ratio of petrol additives we want to add - it's already been done by scientists