(this is gonna be a long post, I'm still trying to figure things out)
I'll be honest, my 'regular schedule' is 'never', because up until now I've only kept carnivorous plants. To a carnivorous plant, fertilizer may as well be toxic. I feed them fish food- dried bloodworms. It didn't actually occur to me until recently that orchids actually like fertilizer.
I currently have 2 mini Phals, a Cattleya, a small Vanda, and a Bnfd Gilded Tower 'Mystic Maze' that's finished blooming but still has a green flower spike. The Vanda is kind of loosely draped on a cow skull and isn't fastened yet, the Cattleya is in the cow's nasal passage but also hasn't fastened, the others are in clay pots.
The fertilizer I bought is Better-Gro Orchid Plus. The ingredient list is as follows, and it says to feed once per week, one teaspoon of fertilizer per gallon of water. It's apparently endorsed by the American Orchid Society, though I'm not sure how much value there is to that, and the packaging suggests that it's meant to encourage growth.
- Total Nitrogen 20%
- Available Phosphate 14%
- Soluble Potash 13%
- Magnesium 1%
- Boron 0.02%
- Copper 0.05%
- Iron 0.20%
- Manganese 0.05%
- Molybdenum 0.0005%
- Zinc 0.05%
The issue I think I'm going to have with a regular fertilizing schedule is that I'm not good at holding a routine. I'm working on that, but I'm honestly not sure how to get exactly a once-weekly or once-biweekly fertilizing schedule going when the orchid watering isn't on such a precise schedule. Heck, I'm not even sure I'm watering the orchids right, this is based off of what I've gathered from my attempts at research.
The Vanda, as I understand it, absolutely hates wet roots. It's kind of draped around a bit of the cow skull's eye socket, with a tiny bit of sphagnum underneath. I dampen the roots with a spray bottle until they're bright green every morning, sometimes twice a day if the air seems particularly dry.
The Cattleya I try to keep also fairly dry. It's planted in the cow's nasal passage, so backing up to loose networks of bone, and it's in mostly large chunks of bark with a small bit of sphagnum. I give it a good spritzing every day, and it dries out entirely before I water again. Some of its pseudobulbs don't ever fatten up, but I think that's because most of the roots attached to those bulbs are gone- it didn't have good roots when I got it, I don't think it can suck up quite enough water for most of the bulbs. The newest bulb stays reasonably plump, as it has plenty of roots.
The two Phals are in the same pot. It's a clay pot with about a third of the side knocked out for more ventilation, and the media is mostly sphagnum with some perlite and bark mixed in. The pot is in a saucer, and I put water in the saucer whenever the moss is right on the verge of crunchy-dry. The roots are white at that point, and they turn green and stay bright green for about a day after I water, then gradually fade for the next couple of days.
The Bnfd, from what I've read, shouldn't be allowed to dry out. It's in a clay pot that's entirely packed with sphagnum, which is the pot it came in. I didn't want to risk transplanting it until it was done flowering, as the roots seem very delicate. I wait until the moss is just on the verge of not damp any more, then put water in the dish under it until the moss is soaked. The roots turn vaguely green when moistened, but none of them show that drastic color shift that Phal and Vanda roots get, and this one's roots seem like a different sort of root than the others. Smoother, thinner, and definitely more fragile- it has a few airial roots that I accidentally broke because I didn't realize how delicate they were.
Irregular fertilizing schedule = bad?
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