Went to a nursery for the first time

[monivik]

Thank you all for your comments. I can't believe this subject got so much enthusiasm.

The little jewel is so far doing ok. Mine is also a small one, here a picture compared to a Phalaenopsis.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I won't repot it quite yet then, I'll wait until it grows some more. I didn't want to buy the bigger Macodes (it was more expensive) I think the small one is cute and I guess it's exciting to see it grow.

So I won't worry too much about the moss being dark green then.

To be honest I will just give this one tap-water, the same I give all my other orchids (the others are fine so far). I don't have ways of getting "special kinds of water". I've been told our tap-water is soft, which should be safe. According to our water provider website it's 7.8. This was measured during the second quarter of 2019. Calcium on average 42mg/l and chlorine an average of 71mg/l. There's a lot of ofter elements mentioned in the list, but to be honest this is all too technical for me.

Anyway so I got the point about using just a small amount of the fertilizer. I have a question regarding fertilizer though: In general I've understood that if you fertilize your orchids it's always good to give them a flush in between the times that you fertilized to get rid of the excess, right? If I'm explaining this correctly. However how do you flush this little Macodes that's in spaghnum? Can I do that? Spaghnum soaks up a lot of water even if I just add a little bit to it, right?

Anyway I don't have a greenhouse, I just have a couple of orchids in a small apartment. I don't even have the space for too many plants.

Regarding temperatures I also don't have any heating on at home so far. It's 20C = 68F inside my house right now. We never really put up the heater too much anyway, we're used to not too hot temperatures, we just wear an extra sweater. I hope that's all right. (oh and humidity is 60+ right now)

[Ray]

Orchids are very undemanding of nutrition, so be quite sparing in your use of fertilizer. Divide 7 by the %N on the fertilizer label, the result is the ml to add to a liter of water for once/week feeding.

Flushing is just that - water heavily with plain water once a month, and let it drain.

Your temperature is a bit on the cool side for the phal, but it'll be OK.

[monivik]

Originally Posted by Ray

Orchids are very undemanding of nutrition, so be quite sparing in your use of fertilizer. Divide 7 by the %N on the fertilizer label, the result is the ml to add to a liter of water for once/week feeding.

Flushing is just that - water heavily with plain water once a month, and let it drain.

Your temperature is a bit on the cool side for the phal, but it'll be OK.

Cool. Thanks. That's handy to know, the calculation thing.

Yeah, I guess my Phals will have to live with that, the temperature I mean. It's winter, it won't much warmer indoors than that. During the day the heater is anyway off as we're not at home so it usually is around 19C = 66.2F (the last couple of years it doesn't get that cold winter time anymore, I guess let's blame it on the greenhouse effect) when we get home from work we never put the heater that high so the temp will never be more than 20C = 68F to 21C = 69.8F. Mostly the 20C... unfortunately I must say that the way our house is built (the apartments in this building) is not the best when it comes to keeping the warmth in. It's not really saving heat and money for that matter. It seems like these apartment buildings from the 80's in the Netherlands were not well isolated plus the huge windows Dutch people seem to like. Who knows one day... I might move somewhere else