To Feed Or Not To Feed

[Faz]

As a beginner and trying to learn as fast as I can, I was thinking about fertilizing my orchids. How do you tell if you are overfeeding? What brought this thought to mind was my miniture rose. The edges of the leaves are turning brown inside the house beside my orchids. I have a tendency to feed once a week, using 20-20-20 fertilizer. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated, as I wouldn't want to do any of my orchids harm.

Best Regards,
Faz.

[Ross]

It will be similar with most orchids. Over fertilization will lead to leaf damage and/or root damage. I would highly recommend reading up on fertilization at Plant Nutrition Be sure to read the whole package. Many folks here (like me) choose to fertilize with every watering with a fertilizer concentration calculated to provide 100-150 ppm Nitrogen. I chose 125ppm for my blend. Any feritilizer will work, just use Ray's calculator (in that thread) to calculate how much of the stuff you have on hand to mix with a gallon of water. You can also use RO/distilled/rain water to flush the pots every so often so salts don't build up. Hope this helps.