Using skewers to determine when to water

[schmiddem]

thanks for your quick, detailed and helpful reply. It is amazing the misinformation one can gather as a brand new orchid Mommy. I will try to weigh the pots, but will have to buy a scale first. It will be complicated because I have 15 orchids in different size pots from 3 different stores. Each store uses different mediums.

[Roberta]

Take a look at the sticky thread The Phal abuse ends here. for some general cultural information about Phals. If you can select a medium that works well for your conditions (humidity, temperature, how often you can water) when you repot, you can put all in the same medium which will make your life easier. As far as weighing, you will probably fairly quickly discover a time interval between waterings that works for you.

[Donnajoanne]

Very helpful, I'm sure I was over watering, so I am using all these methods ( stick and weighing pots) until I get my confidence.

[Henry]

Originally Posted by Donnajoanne

Very helpful, I'm sure I was over watering, so I am using all these methods ( stick and weighing pots) until I get my confidence.

I agree and thanks for all the skewer tips!

I'm seeing that even though I'm all over the weighing and graphing it even.

Only the skewer tells me the actual moisture quality.

Weighing is much faster, so as practice goes by perhaps I can rely more on the graph and each plant's happy point.

It's intersting that all the pots have pretty much the same downward trend in water loss.