Ok to water from a shared bucket?

[marcoeverard]

Just wondering if it is ok to fill up a bucket with rainwater and dunk all of my orchids in there to save on the rainwater and have a seprate bucket with water mixed with feed.

[nikkik]

I wouldn't dunk multiple orchids in the same bucket for watering or feeding. If one had an issue I wasn't yet aware of (fungus, virus, etc.) I wouldn't want it to be transmitted to other plants through the water. I would put the rain water in a spray bottle and water/fertilize that way.

[marcoeverard]

Ok thank you I will invest in a pressure sprayer

[james mickelso]

I water all of my orchids with one 5 gallon bucket of RO water. Well I replenish and water about 1 third of my orchids then mix up a new bucket full. But if you can afford it I would recommend watering one orchid with it's own allotment of water. One way to do that is to get a pot just slightly larger than the pot the orchid is in and put the orchid in the larger pot and pour water to fill the larger pot. Then repeat for additional orchids. One orchid, one dunking. I can't afford to water that way with the number of orchids I have. I pay a price too. But most of my orchids are suspect anyway so I don't worry. But if you have nice orchids I would find a way to water them separately.

[Bud]

I understand you need to conserve water. Im with nikkik on this....bottle spray it.

[james mickelso]

bottle spraying 100 orchids is not feasible nor would it thoroughly wet all the roots in a pot.

[marcoeverard]

I would love to be able to just set up an overhead misting system but it seems that with hard tap water this is a no no. Having said that for the past two years all of my paphs and dendrobiums have been getting tap water and have been doing fine. I hope to build up a collection of a couple of hundred plants so convenience is an issue as is the fact that I travel regularly.

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[cbuchman]

Originally Posted by james mickelso

bottle spraying 100 orchids is not feasible nor would it thoroughly wet all the roots in a pot.

I have 125+ orchids in my collection. I water using a 1.5 gal watering can about twice a week - I have mostly tiny clay pots that dry out quickly. I also mist surface roots almost daily and mist my mounted guys that dry out daily. Misting takes about 15-20 minutes. Watering take 30-40 minutes.

In the summer, everybody is outside so the excess water just wets the cement patio. In the winter, they are on trays then empty into a dry well. So, again, I don't have to worry about the run off. So to me the ease of watering is how well you can manage the run-off. I don't have to cart my orchids to the sink or otherwise move them for watering.

This is not ideal for a long soak, but it does seem to work for me. If I do need to soak somebody, I use a margarine container and put the pot in it for soaking.

I too have hard tap water so I don't use an automated misting system. I use rain water (from a rain barrel) most of the time. In the dead of winter, I use tap water.

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[RosieC]

It always runs the risk of transfering infection.

I know some people who water them in groups, so a group shares a bucket. It is still a risk and the people that do it know they risk loosing a whole group if one get's something... but that's better than the whole collection.

I have all my indoor ones on outer cache pots. I water by filling each cache pot to the top from a watering can. When I've gone round them all I start again at the beginning and empty all the cache pots into a bucket. That way I can soak them all (almost) at once and they don't share water.

For my greenhouse I just use the watering can to pour water over them and it runs onto the floor. I mostly use rain water for that as it takes more water than the soaking method and I don't feel like I'm wasting water when it's rain water that would have gone down the drain and is now going into my ground.

Garden ones I do similar, but even more so I'm watering that area of the garden as I do it so not wasting water (and again using rain water).

[NYCorchidman]

I take my orchids to the sink or bath tub to water & drain well.
It takes a few hours, but I think it is a good way to water them for indoor growers like me.

I wish I had a greenhouse though so I don't have to carry all the pots back and forth.

well,,,