How do you determine when to water?

[justintimedc]

I am a pediatric nurse....and you all are bringing me back to the days of testing formula temperature on the wrist!

[justatypn]

Actually Just, that's where I got the idea, worked in peds for a while myself and its just "old school"...

[Ray]

After almost 35 years of orhid growing, I'm convinced that air management is primary, and watering is secondary to orchid culture.

With the exception of plants that have evolved to live in environments that dry very quickly (look into tolumnias' natural habitat, as a good example), it is practically impossible o water a plant that has sufficient air flow at the root system to go with it.

Once you've got the "air" part down, overwatering isn't an issue, and observation of the plants can be used to judge extreme underwatering, and it's easy to compensate.