Plant nutrients

[Kelo]

I bought some orchid fertilizer and nutrients from the company below. Does anyone from the UK use these products (bought from Peter White if memory serves)?

Plant Nutrients - Orchid Focus and Ultra

Orchid Fertilizers great products for your orchids - ORCHID ACCESSORIES

[RosieC]

I've used the fertiliser, it's not a bad one (although I now buy a stronger powder one Peter White sells as I can mix that weaker and it works out cheaper).

The suggested 5ml per 2l is a little weak as my memory servers, but I can't find the NPK figures online so can't work out what it should be. I put the figures into Ray's calculator and I remember it needed to be stronger than the bottle said, but I've thrown out the bottle when I finished it a couple of months ago and I'm not sure what the figures are now.

[camille1585]

I used Orchid Focus Grow for a while, but I stopped because it was leaving a nasty brown deposit on the roots. That may not be a problem for potted plants, but it made my mounted orchids very ugly, and since I soak those in the water, even the leaves were getting brown stains.

[Kelo]

That's interesting to know. I'll keep a look out for the brown deposits. Can you tell me where to find the calculator mentioned, please? The fertiliser from Peter White in Dyna-Gro and the NPK is 3-12-6 and the Orchid Focus Grow is 2.1-1.2-2.1 and I've using that together with the Dyna-Gro and Orchid Ultra. To be honest in the past I used Phostrogen general purpose fertiliser at quarter strength and my plants seemed to grow like mad with it. I also used Phostrogen tomato food in the autumn, again with excellent results at quarter strength.

[Jeff9]

Well i have never been one to care much for the grow / flower fertilisers or using tons of diffrent ones.

If i were you i would go with a MSU-type fertiliser mix and start using RO/rain/well water.

Firstrays carries it in USA and Akerne in europe.

I recently started with Akerne rain mix and before i used a diffrent type.

I grow all my plants in mostly nonorganic matter and only some sphagnum sometimes. Epiweb is my mounting material choise and for potted i use a home made mix that varies depending on the plant but mostly its AA+ grade sphag, charcoal, medium to fine grade american sponge rock / perlite or another type of rock

[RosieC]

Take a look here for the calculator Fertilizer Mixing Calculators

Are you using the Dyna Grow and the Orchid Focus at the same time? I'm not sure why you would do that. The calculations are assuming one fertiliser at at a time and both of these are fertilisers.

[Kelo]

Thank you for the link. The Orchid Focus doesn't mention it being a fertiliser on the bottle - which is why I added it - plus with the far lower NPK it doesn't substantially alter the made up fertiliser Dyna-Gro feed. I thought it simply added a different dimension to the feed. Point taken though.

[RosieC]

I think that was really my point about Orchid Focus being a bit too weak for my liking. You have to use a lot of it to get the required strength. It is a fertiliser though from everything I've read about it, and that's what I used it as when I had it.