Fertilizing Orchids Weakly Weekly applicable?

[Dragon Tamer]

Hello all; Dragon Tamer Here, I wanted to know when fertilizing Orchids does the old adage 'fertilize weakly weekly' still hold true or does it only apply for some orchids or not at all? I am trying to work out how to fertilize orchids properly Thank you for reading

[euplusia]

Basically still true as long as plants are in active growth. Some heavy feeders need more fertilizer than miniature botanicals though.

[bil]

Basically, an orchid needs only so much NPK etc. If you save it up and give it a month's worth of fertiliser in one hit, you are possibly going to burn roots. Better by far to spread the appropriate dose out over every watering, IMO.

[Ray]

Being a nerd about these things, I will point out that "weakly" is meaningless. It's pretty much along the lines of "How high is 'up'?". If you really want to manage your collection, so you have a factual basis for adjustments to improve their culture, you'll want to work with actual numbers.

Professionals in horticulture usually manage feeding in terms of the nitrogen concentration to be applied (you'll see "ppm N" around here, for example), with the choice of fertilizer formula being used to control the other elements. A quarter-teaspoon per gallon of an 8-10-8 formula, and two-thirds of a teaspoon of a 3-1-6 will both give you 25 ppm N, but with different P & K levels.

As bil implied, a small amount of fertilizer applied frequently is better than a huge amount applied infrequently, but the nutrient demand for nutrition is quite low compared to most terrestrial plants, so even if applied every week or so, you're still not likely to harm the plants, unless you're over-applying it.

I have a whole section of my website dedicated to this subject. You might like to check it out.