fertilizer and growth of flower buds vs psuedobulbs

[Jeff214]

Hi,

I have a den roy tokunaga. A couple of the pseudobulbs had flower bud looking things peeking out of the top of the larger psuedobulbs. At the same time, I saw new pseudobulbs poking out from the roots. So... I decided to fertilize it with a half strength 30-10-10 fert...

Then a week or so later the flower bulbs started to shrivel while the pseudobulbs started to grow more and more vigorously.... The flowers that were already in bloom are still doing very well.

Should I have not fertilized it while some of the psuedobulbs had flower bulbs that were developing? I was a bit confused what to do since all the pseudobulbs were at different stages of growth (flowering, spiking, growing the canes, emerging from the roots, and some don't even seem like they are growing at all anymore)



Jeff

[tucker85]

I'm not convinced that you caused it to abort blooming by using the fertilizer but in the future it's probably best to be consistent and not to change your culture routine when you see a spike.

[WhiteRabbit]

I give my latouria Dens fertilizer year round -these don't want any rest period, tho I've heard some people recommend withholding fertilizer in fall/winter for spectabile (others don't) - but for this hybrid, I would water and fertilize normally year-round. I wouldn't expect a weak fertilizer to harm the buds.

[Ray]

What constitutes "half strength"? Half of what? (Please don't respond with "the manufacturer's recommendation", as that still leaves us with no information to work with.)

[Optimist]

I was basically reading an article about paphs last night, and there it said not to fertilise while the plant was in flower. I don't really use much formulated chemicle fertilizers, just usually a weak tea of kelp, bone meal and laterite/ leonardite.

[Jeff214]

I fertilize with Miracle Gro Orchid Food, at 1/8 tsp per gallon. The den's in a bark/charcoal/perlite mix. I generally just water it thoroughly and drain any excess water for a few min. I water every other day (making sure its dry first) and water with fertilizer once a week. Maybe that's too frequent? The rest of the orchid seems happy (to me...) it was just the flower buds that gave me trouble.

But in any case, I should have been more careful when I saw the spikes emerging...

Come to think of it... it was also cold/rainy (no sun) for close to 3 weeks straight and suddenly became hot/sunny for a week now. It started to poke up flower buds towards the end of this rainy period. The buds shrived while the psuedobulbs began to grow as it became sunny. The room the dens are in don't have the best temp control... perhaps this was the contributing factor...

[Ray]

That's 50 ppm N, which isn't strong enough to have such an effect. During active growth, I might go as far as to double that, but I cannot see you doing any harm with continuing with that feeding and watering regimen. (I feed at half that concentration, but do so with every watering.)

If the room suddenly got warm and dry, that could definitely lead to bud blast.

[Jeff214]

Thanks, Ray. I'll continue with my current feeding schedule and watch out for sudden temperature fluctuations.

I will not ruin my next spikes!!