Catasetum - To water or not to water ?

[camille1585]

Originally Posted by orchidsarefun

Mine grew to this large size, I'm convinced, because I used to use 1 year old horse manure in bottom third of pot. Rest of mix was bark and sphagnum. The current mix is mostly bark/sphagnum because the roots basically fill the pot.
When these go outside I also top dress with a teaspoon of bone meal and blood meal respectively. Plus osmocote.
I don't know why the leaf tips would brown on yours.

I love all your growing tips, they are invaluable to a newbie Cat grower like me.

Since I have access to composted horse manure, I decided to try it this year with one of my 2 plants when repotting to see how it goes. When you were still using manure, were you also adding bone/blood meal and osmocote, or was the manure the sole source of nutrition? Last year my plants were both in sphagnum and I was fertilizing quite heavily, so with the manure I'm not sure how far downwards I need to adjust the feeding.

[orchidsarefun]

It was manure and all that fertilizer too.
It will be interesting to see if you get great results.

Here's an updated photo

[camille1585]

I had started pouring a little bit of water on the side of the plant opposite to where I expected new growth when you wrote about your experiment with it, and I was happy to see 2 growths start. Of course it can also be complete coincidence, but I was surprised to see a rather young plant produce 2 growths so soon.

The plant is looking great so far! My other one is still dormant (Clo. Rebecca Northen, so not surprising), but I might give it the same treatment.

[orchidsarefun]

That looks great.
The watering keeps the bulbs firm and healthy looking - at least with my denticulatum, pileatum, macroglossum, Millennium Magic and After Dark. It worked with my fimbriatum too and that's the only one I have in 100% sphagnum.

My macroglossum is in full leaf and has 3 spikes. It's the earliest it's ever been and I'm curious to see what happens later in the season. It looks as if there is a new growth starting off the new growth but it's early days yet.

[orchidsarefun]

Originally Posted by orchidsarefun

The ruler illustrates my problem. The growths are well over 12 inches long and the problem is getting enough sun to the plants as the weather is still too cold to place them outdoors. I'm not complaining, it's the best problem to have this early in the grow season.


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Post from 29 April 2017. Roughly 2 years later to the day and this same plant is better by any measure. Interesting reading all the comments again too!

[Subrosa]

A couple of mine. The pots are filled 2/3 of the way with cow manure and topped with shredded cedar mulch. Watering? Soon, but not yet.

[Subrosa]

Still not watering this one. The pot in the foreground is a standard 4" terra cotta for scale. New growth is about 18" long at this point.

[orchidsarefun]

My monster plant.
Roots branching all over too.
All growths easily exceeding 12 inches.

This is already standing permanently in a 8in saucer of rainwater

[SouthPark]

My current test on a bunch of catasetum type plants coming out of dormancy is (after bulbs had been leafless for quite a while) --- watering the brand new roots themselves, and the surrounding medium.

Light watering. I'm giving an update every once in a while at:

Relatively light watering of roots

So far, I have seen no issues. The plants are just taking off, and they don't appear to be negatively affected by watering.

The aim is not related to a need or desire to water the new roots of a plant coming out of true dormancy. Instead, it relates to whether or not the new roots and/or new growth get affected (negatively) by watering. I am seeing no problems at all - for Clo, Fdk, Monn, and Mo.