hidden steps growers take

[Ray]

Originally Posted by claypot

.............and remember...........the chances are that your plants have probably never seen their natural habitat but have been bred and reared in artificial conditions, so they are tougher than you think being used to town water etc.

Does that really make them tougher? Artificially controlled environments can be a lot more stable than nature.

[DirtyCoconuts]

i read that weird as well..i think the point is that they are more tolerant of NON-pure water.

if that is a "toughness" is more of a subjective question

[claypot]

The point I was trying to make is that starting life and being reared in an artificial environment makes a somewhat different plant than one that is wild collected. In short, the artificialness is built into the plant from birth so the correspondent should not get too hung up on trying to imitate nature. Just keep it simple and the plant will adapt gradually to the new host environment just as if it is moved from wild to greenhouse.

[estación seca]

Orchids are almost all remarkably easy to grow if they have the correct conditions. I suspect the happiest growers find plants that do well in their conditions, rather than struggling with plants wanting conditions substantially different from those the grower can provide.

[Roberta]

ES, totally agree. An "easy orchid" is one for which one has the necessary conditions without a lot of trouble and expense. A "difficult" orchid is one that needs both. Your "easy" may be my "difficult" and vice versa.

Once one gets deeply into the hobby, it is fun to try to push the boundaries, of course, but by that time the knowledge has increased to the point where one can learn from the fatalities (boundaries pushed too hard)

[claypot]

Absolutely correst ES and Roberta..........speaking sense at last. It is the recipient's conditions which determine success or failure, not the plants themselves. I wonder whether, like me, others have been asked so many times. "I have just bought this orchid how do I look after it?". Orchids are not cheap plants so I can never understand why anybody would buy a plant without some basic understanding about the sort of conditions it will prefer.

[Shadeflower]

Roberta, each to their own as they say and I totally respect your position.

I do think trying to perfect things can sometimes take the joy out of growing them but then when my orchids do grow better it is more rewarding so can't have one without the other unfortunately.

One thing I cannot quite explain is that my rainwater is 7.8 here in the uk.

It probably has to do with the shed roof that it collects off but I couldn't use that. Rainwater is meant to be like 5.6 or something like that. Mine most definitely isn't. I adjust it. Don't really understand why it is as high as it is but it's not really a problem. I think using something close to 8 would be a problem long term so for me it would be.

It is true that for most people it just isn't worth thinking about it much and the hybrids have been bred to tolerate such wide conditions including ph and water quality conditions. They are very hardly in that regard.

But seedlings certainly are not and that is what I want to get into long term. So I check my ph and I have spent far too much time investigating the individual needs of different species.

I know there are some orchids I would never bother to grow again - they are too challenging for me but at the same time I know they are too challenging because I understand them too little. I won't bother with those but I honestly believe we (I) just don't know enough to keep some challenging species happy.

oh yes I forgot I wanted to add for us cold climate growers growing warm growers is certainly very rewarding!!

Warm growers are much more vigorous growers during the cold winter months than what "we can grow naturally" here, I would not do without my vanda's or my warm growing catts, they are amongst my favorite plants.

Same goes for warm growing phals ie the fragrant ones compared to the ones that we get in supermarkets that grow well here. The warm ones certainly are more challenging but also more rewarding.

For someone living in a hot climate maybe that sentiment makes sense (nobody misses growing uk bog orchids) but otherway round it does make sense to try to grow orchids that bring a bit of tropical feel to our limited cold growing selection.

[Roberta]

SF, I totally understand the special joy that your green and blooming orchids give in your cold, gloomy winters... I still vividly recall, many years ago, on a work trip to the middle of the US in February. Everything cold and gray and brown. The facility had a "tropical" atrium full of plants - I recall the renewing feeling of just standing in front of it drinking in the green.

I do wonder about the high pH of your rainwater... But being fairly pure, I expect that with any fertilizer (or even weak organic acids in the medium) the pH drops right into the correct range since the solids level is low, hence no buffering. Rainwater at pH 7.8 is a whole lot different that hard (calcium bicarbonate-loaded) tap water at pH 7.8 that needs vinegar to attack that buffering to get it down into reasonable fertilizer range.

Have you measured the pH of the water that runs through the pot (with no fertilizer, just that natural rainwater)? The measurement is a lot more meaningful if you can test what the plant is experiencing - after it has been through the pot and root zone.