Fertilizer misconception to talk about

[buzzlightyear]

Over the years I have noticed a growing trend amongst new orchid growers to fertilize too weakly.

I want to address this issue.

From reading some posts on here I have come to the conclusion that hardly anyone knows how to fertilize orchids correctly on here. I know this will sound controversial but surely the aim is to grow healthy orchids. If advice given is going to cause orchids to die, shouldn't it be pointed out? I mean I have noticed reading precious posts that advice has been called excellent, informative and useful when I know that advice would literally have killed mine if I did that.

There is little people can do wrong growing orchids. But fertilizing has got a bigger effect long term than most realize.

We all know what happens if you overfertilize but as someone who has quite a lot of plant growing experience I also know longer term it is just as detrimental to feed too little.

Ultimately the plants will suffer. Either root rot, crown rot, pests will attack it from being weak or fusarium or fungus will get it. But strong orchids are much better at fighting off problems so many times these problems can be avoided by keeping an orchid strong.

So the problem is feeding the correct amount to every single orchid whether it is a small orchid, a big orchid, whether it is potted , mounted, grown hydroponically, in moss, what type of rochid it is.

According to the advice on here one needs endless pages of varying amounts of fertilizer for all different orchids and ironically sometimes, many times even peoplle happen to get it just right.

Then other times they feed far too little. Rarely does anyone feed too much because that is talked about every day which results in the opposite, people always feeding too little.

I know what people will say, feeding too little is better than too much. This is true of course, no question. But if a grower wants to grow orchids long term, and I mean more than 4 years. And I am not talking about outdoor growers who have it far easier anyway. Indoors one has to provide all that nature provides outdoors. Including fertilizer.

I am writing this because I discovered as many growers I was fertilizing too little to begin with and it cost me orchids after a few years.

Initially everything seemed to go great. Just like ninja orchids for example.

But these days if you still follow her channel she loses at least 20 orchids per year and then brings out an orchid video on how "to prevent" whatever killed her last orchid (or more accurately has not yet, but the orchid is past saving and you get clickbaited into watching a video on how to save an orchid that is past saving already anyway). Instead people should be watching growers who do not lose 20 orchids per year on average. That is one good thing about ninja orchids at least. You can count and see how many video's she brings out in a year mentioning "how to prevent" "crown rot, fusarium, mealies, scale, thrips, fungus, fusarium, roots rotting, cold damage". She has brought out several addressing each one just this year alone. Eventually I had enough presonally. I don't get any of the problems she gets and the reason she gets all these problems are not to do with any of the reasons she mentions. She just chronically underfertilizes.

And she is just one example. Cause she has like 7k followers. Who are they copying?

And so on.

No different here so I wanted to point it out.

Now the biggest hurdle to convincing anyone on here is one simple wrong notion.

That is the following:

"An orchid with a bigger mass needs more fertilizing than an orchid with a smaller mass."

Now in theory this is true. Sure. But in practice it leads to the problems I talk about and why so many people struggle with mini orchids in general.

Ok so the problem is how strong to fertilize every different orchid in ones collection, whether they are mounted and get watered every day, whether they are potted and only get watered once a week. A huge orchid vs a mini orchid.

Right?

Right that is what everyone struggles with and gets it wrong for no good reason. I know this will cause controversy here and the reason for my frustration.

What I will say will come from years of orchid growing experience and yet it will be something many supposed experts on here will disagree with.

So I want to tackle this logically so it makes sense to anyone who I have not lost up till now reading this.

The notion is that a bigger orchid needs more fertilizer than a mini orchid ok. And like I said this is completely true in theory.

However one fundamental thing one has to realize at the same time is that a bigger orchid will drink more than a mini orchid.

So the thing one has to realize is that a bigger orchid not only needs more fertilizer than a mini orchid, but at the same time it needs more watering too.

Same with a fast growing orchid vs slow growing orchid. IT's very important to remember this so it all makes sense.

Ok so lets take a different hypothetical example. A shrimp vs a whale. Ok so you run an aquarium centre and a fishman comes up to you and says I caught you a shrimp and a whale today. Hope you know how to loo after them.

Ok so the whale as a large mass creature will need more salt in its talk than the shrimp. Ok lets analyse that for a minute.

In theory this is true. The whale will need a huge aquarium and thus will need lots of sacks of salt added to get the right salt concentration to match sea water.

The shrimp will need a tiny little tank and wil only need a tiny pinch of salt added to its tank.

Ok so that all makes sense right? But see this is easy to get confused by at the same time.

See we are not actually feeding the shrimp less salt than the whale....

I mean yes and no. Because the whalt tank is so much bigger, we are adding so much more salt. But after doing all this and giving the whale hundreds times more salt than the shimp.... one other thing one culd do is set up the whalt tank so it matches sea water perfectly, then just scoop out a glass of water from the whale tank and place the shimp in the glass of water. The shrimp would be fine!

So you see how easy it actually can be, or how confusing one can make it for oneself.

One can make one huge aquarium and fill it with lots of salt and then use that to fill lots of smaller tanks and they will all have the right concentration of salt.

In the same way we can do that for our orchids, it is what I do, what every good grower should be doing but I see so many people get wrong at the same time.

So to conclude, a mini orchid needs less fertilizer than a big orchid, at the same time it needs less water or absorbs less water. As a result the concentration of fertilizer we use on the big orchid or the mini should be identical. Just like the salt concentration for a shrimp needs to be identical to that what a whale needs.

The reason the big orchid will automatically get more fertilizer is because it will drink more water. There is nothing we as an orchid grower need to adjust or do differerntly ( or more confusing).

It really is that simple. The professional orchid growers make one buge solution to water their orchids with. These days it is known that more often and weaker is better than less often and stronger. So on every watering is best.

According to fred clarke that is half a tsp MSU/gallon on every watering and one must remember that is a conservative amount that will be universally valid on absolutely every orchid one can grow.

Some vanda's can take far more than this. But that is confusing things as half a tsp MSU/ gallon is enough on every watering to grow great vanda's.

IT is however the minium for a mature vanda. Any less than this will probably cause problems (rot, fungus, weakness)

I hope this helps anyone. I know the result it most likely will have. I hope it hasn't. I hope people, say wow, thank you for expaining that.

Instead I feel it might have the opposite reaction. I would welcome any discussion about this of course but at the same time it is pretty simple and straightforward. Either you believe what I have written here or you do not and in my opinion would thus not be as well equipped to grow orchids as me.

---------- Post added at 10:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:45 AM ----------

so I want o elaborate further on this.

When I fertilize or feed my mounted orchid I use water from the same solution I make for my whole collection.

Those that get watered in pots once a week get the same fertilier water as the mounted ones I water every day.

I do not adjust it and feed the one stronger than the other.

Then another example would be watering a potted orchid. You can either water it 70ml once a week or you can water it 10ml every single day.

At the end of the week the orchid that was watered daily will have absorbed the same amount of water as the orchid that was watered once a week.

One could of course water more but this would just cause overwatering.

Ok so in the two examples, watering every single day, watering once a week.

How strong should we be fertilzing?

And the answer is exactly the same.

Whether you water 70ml per week (+the right amount of fertilizer for such an amount of water) or 7x 10ml (+the right amount of fertilizer for such an amount of water) has the exact same result.

Adjusting it to fertilize the orchid that gets watered daily would result in chronic underfertilizing.

It would be the equivalent of the shrimp in the glass of water every day having a bit of water taken out and replaced with just pure water. Over time the shrimp would have too little salt and would die.

sry I forgot to add a ps which will of course confuse things but needs to be added.

Sometimes you do want to feed less, seedlings, dormant plants, there are times to feed less...

My aim was more to highlight the right amount to feed.

If I showed you my biggest cymbidium and my smallest angraecum and told you I fertilize them with the same fertilized water I feel many would be shocked...

Seedlings should get less. But otherwise a mature mini orchid should in theory be able to handle the same concentration as a massive mature orchid. Just like the shrimp and the whale.

[estación seca]

One of the first things my English composition teacher taught me was to say things as concisely as possible. Could you please cut out all the excessive verbosity so somebody will be willing to read that?

Edit: It is well established, by research and by observations of commercial growers who make their living growing orchids, that different kinds of orchids require different amounts of fertilizer. So your assertion that all orchids can be fertilized the same is incorrect.

[buzzlightyear]

Originally Posted by estación seca

One of the first things my English composition teacher taught me was to say things as concisely as possible. Could you please cut out all the excessive verbosity so somebody will be willing to read that?

Edit: It is well established, by research and by observations of commercial growers who make their living growing orchids, that different kinds of orchids require different amounts of fertilizer. So your assertion that all orchids can be fertilized the same is incorrect.

example nr 1

[Dimples]

It may be more helpful to breakup your post into sections or by sub-topic. Maybe pop in some headings?

The total length makes it difficult for readers to visually track across the screen effectively without the formal writing structure that English readers typically expect from a long form piece.

[thefish1337]

is this an AI generated version of Shadeflower?

[Dimples]

Originally Posted by thefish1337

is this an AI generated version of Shadeflower?

I was wondering a similar thing.

[rbarata]

Originally Posted by thefish1337

is this an AI generated version of Shadeflower?

[Ray]

(Pssst. Psssst. - starting out a post by pretty much saying that everyone here is a dunce about feeding will not encourage folks to read more and may piss a few off.)

I find your post to be unhelpful, as you have no factual information backing up your claims and except for what Fred Clarke does, no numbers about what you think is correct.

Here is the logic I have used to come to my regimen:

• In nature, epiphytes get the majority of their nutrition when the rains wash dust, droppings, and canopy tree exudates down onto them. The concentration of those nutrients is minuscule and is only present for the first few seconds after the rainfall begins. After that, it’s pretty much pure water.
  
• The mass of nutrition captured is determined by the concentration in the throughfall and trunk flow, coupled with the volume of velamen on the roots. Once the velamen is saturated, nothing more is captured.

So the nutrition supply is a tiny concentration, absorbed by a finite volume, but can be taken up frequently. I copy that in my feeding regimen, preferring to feed a dilute solution, frequently, as that is what the plants have evolved to expect.

Then there’s the mass of nutrients required.

All plants, as far as I’m aware, use the same chemical processes to fix carbon. (C3, C4, and CAM may differ, but that has to do with collection and storage of carbon dioxide than the underlying conversion process.)

In order for those processes to add one pound of mass to a plant, it must take in and process about 25 gallons (~200#) of water and only about a teaspoon (~5 grams) of NPK nutrients.

Corn (maize) might gain that much in a week in the middle of summer. A phalaenopsis might add a pound of mass over the span of several years.

If, for the sake of argument, we select a 4-year window and assume the plant will absorb 100% of what is applied (completely fallacious, but bear with me), that would mean that we could feed it about 1 gallon per week of an 11 ppm (TDS) solution. However, if you add that roughly 95% of the water absorbed is lost to transpiration, that means our solution could be only 0.6 ppm concentration!

Thinking back to the exposure time and capture volume, which limits the uptake per watering, and realize that there is also a limited amount of continued uptake from the surrounding substrate, it seems a sure bet that such a regimen would starve the plants. We compensate by increasing the solution concentration and by our feeding schedule.

We can calculate the volume of the velamen on a plant by measuring the total root length, outside diameter, and thickness of that layer, but that’ll vary by type of orchids, size, maturity, etc., and I’m not about to chop off roots to do that.

So, instead, after over 50 years of experimenting, I have settled on the application of a 100 ppm N solution once a week. For plants in moist, water-holding media, that seems to be a pretty good level, and I don’t see a lot of death in my collection. For bare root vandas, knowing they only get fed while being irrigated, I might increase the frequency.

Being that all plants have the same nutritional demand for growth, that suggests that vandas being “hungry” is as much about their uptake capacity per feeding as it is their growth rate.

[WaterWitchin]

Originally Posted by thefish1337

is this an AI generated version of Shadeflower?

No, AI usually makes more sense, despite the similarity in being convoluted. This is just Shady Version 8.1.

I'm sending the fake BuzzLightyear "to infinity and beyond." Leaving his verbiage for posterity, so if he's missed one can come back and review. Version 8.1 of Whack a Mole has officially ended.

[tmoney]

howdy! ai, or not, i think its good when somebody comes and gives the body a shake....just to make sure we are all still awake!

on the fertilizer issue, in 2022 we didn't fertilize at all. like maybe once that year. while we didn't lose too many plants it was obvious that the reasons we lost them were not due to ferts. it was mostly cold temps that got ours. however, we still got a fair amount of blooming in spring of 2023.

once we started fertilizing regularly again, it is clear that the plants do have better root growth and overall vigor. but i should say that we follow the weakly/weekly idea, except its actually about every 2 weeks that we fertilize. perhaps for some of the new genera we are trying we could up the concentrations and frequency, but we are still getting a baseline and will start to a/b test some things as we go into summer.

in summary, not sure that i totally agree with your post. i do agree that some folks who are on YouTube seem to never show the same plant 2x, and if we did that many unboxing vids we would need a second home for them. that said, even our amateur eye can identify reasons for the plants dying and usually fertilizers are the least of their worries.
edit to add....didnt see he/she was booted before posting. oh well, gonna leave it!