Soaking vs "watering"

[camille1585]

I agree, it completely depends on your climate. I spend most of the year in the Netherlands, and a few months in France, and I have to adapt my watering depending on where I am. Most of my orchids are in bark. The netherlands is quite humid, the humidity on my windowsill rarely dips below 50-60%. Here I water mostly by pouring water though the pots (but nowhere near 5-10 minutes, it closer to 30 seconds) and it's more than enough for them. Once and I while I give them a soak.

In France on the other hand, the climate is much drier and overall warmer. Pouring water through the pots is not enough, they need to be soaked every time. Even watering every few days was not enough since the bark dried too quickly. I had some phals with wrinkled leaves. Soaking pretty much solved the problem.

[Becca]

Hi ardera! You've recevied alot of great feed back in this thread! I just thought I would give my ! I agree with the others....you must find what works for you, because what works for one person may not work for you. I live in a climate like yours, a high desert area, very dry! But I grow most of my orchids in an orchidarium and a converted exo-terra terrarium for higher humidity (70% to 90%). I find it really just depends on what kind of potting medium I use for a particular orchid. My cattleyas are potted in a very chunky open fast draining bark mix, and even though the humidity is up high, I find they could stand to be watered every 5 days, but I only water the large part of my collection once a week because I just simply don't have time to water every 5 days since it is a lot of work to take them out of the orchidarium, run them up stairs, soak them (since they dry out fast I give mine a good soak, about 20 or 30 minutes) and then I have to put them back in their spot.

Wow this is getting long, sorry

So yes I soak most of my orchids. I used to have my cattleyes in a chunky coconut husk chunk (chc) mix, this I had problems with the soaking method because I wasn't allowing the medium to dry out enough in the center and was causing fungal problems in the medium. So it just depends on what you use! I also have phals in a bark mix and in a chc that are not in the orchidarium or exo-terra terrarium, but I use a humidity tray with them, humidity is around 50%. I find I need to water them about every 4 days if I remember, but lately I've been bad and they have been getting watered once a week. Any phals that are in moss or a moss mixture is allowed to dry out in between waterings, but for no more then a day or so and then I water them again.

Anyways, I hope this helps you and you can take what we have all said and find a happy medium that will work for you!

And one last thing, you mentioned you were watering twice a day to every 3 days and still getting wrinkled leaves. Are you sure that the medium was dried out before watering (are you using clear pots?). It could be a case of over watering and rotting the roots and now they can't take up any water and thus the leaf wrinkling. Have you checked the roots? Just thought I would check!