Watering during heat wave?!?

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by estación seca

Given your environment, I suggest watering them well after dark during the heat wave. The evaporative cooling at night will help them tolerate hot days better. Your humidity isn't high enough to worry about fungus, plus they will dry quickly after a watering.

Consider getting a large (1-2 gallon / 3.7-7.4 liter) pump-pressure spray container from a hardware store for watering. You will waste far less RO water. These are commonly sold for pesticide or herbicide use.

Pump sprayer works well... until I got my fancy power sprayer, I used it for fertilizing.

This last week (and it's going to extend probably until next weekend) we have been getting quite a bit of humidity with the heat. Very unpleasant for people, not so bad for orchids. Hot muggy nights too. (Coastal southern California with overnight lows of 76-77 deg F is NOT normal) Ick. But after a week of this already, I haven't seen any sign of heat stress on the plants (mounted or otherwise) with the bit of extra watering that I'm doing. Orchids are a lot tougher than I am... I do hate to imagine what my electric bill is going to look like with the extra hours of A/C.

[BarleyTwist]

Estación seca, is there a particular make or model of sprayer that works well? How long can such sprayers spray on a single water filling? Not sure how much less RO water it would waste than my current dunking approach, but I’m interested in checking out the sprayer method. Thanks very much!

---------- Post added at 06:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:46 PM ----------

Roberta, what is the fancy power sprayer, in brief? I imagine it would be overkill for me, but I’m curious …

[Roberta]

I got this one
Amazon.com
6.5 gallons, on a cart, with a battery and a long hose. But I have a big yard to cover ... I extend about 75 ft of that hose in two directions with the sprayer in the middle, find that I don't have to move it. And fill it twice. When I carried the 2 gallon pump sprayer around the yard, I had to refill it 8 or 9 times, and I'm getting too old to schlep that much weight around . For 20 plants, definitely overkill for my big yard... it has turned out to be a lifesaver.

[estación seca]

If you want to start with something simple, this might work.

Needs to be carried, but isn't that heavy. The hose isn't that long so you need to hold it up in the air to reach some hanging plants. These also come in 1- and 3-gallon sizes. If using for fertilizer I recommend mixing in a bucket, then filtering through a coffee filter into the sprayer.

If you only have 20 plants, the gallon size should be enough. But you're not going to have 20 plants for long.

[BarleyTwist]

Thank you — I’ll check them out. And I suspect you may be right about the number of plants multiplying!

[Roberta]

That is the exact type of sprayer that I used for my fertilizing. And works very well for a small collection or one in a small area. I have one (maybe not that exact brand, but same item) that I use for my indoor watering. 2 gallons of water weights 8 pounds, so with the sprayer itself, about 9 pounds. (It only got heavy when I was carrying that much all over my large yard for several hours...if this old lady can carry one of these, anybody can )

[BarleyTwist]

I have a similar one in my garage — .75 gal I think. It’s a pain only because you have to pump it pretty often. I’m thinking the dunking might be better than pumping enough to water each plant for multiple minutes. But maybe I’m not thinking about this from the right angle …

[Roberta]

When I water with the pump sprayer, I don't do it for all that long... potted plants, just until the water runs out. Mounted ones, sphag is damp and roots are green. The bigger tank will spray for longer than the little one (more headspace holds more air), but you still get your arm exercise. Dunking works for you, might as well stay with it for now. As your collection gets bigger ( resistance is futile ) you'll be looking for other strategies.

One of the things to start to investigate... water quality. Get your water report, find out the Total Dissolved Solids level. We already know that the primary contributors to that measure are calcium and magnesium carbonates. (Classic southern California hard water) Some of those plants really do need RO, others may be fine with tap water (from a hose) Andy uses RO exclusively but the water in the San Diego area is much worse than Los Angeles and most surrounding cities. (Still not great, but not the liquid rocks that he has to deal with) But as the collection grows, you'll be looking for ways to keep everybody happy without working too hard yourself. So knowledge is power.

[BarleyTwist]

Wise words, Roberta. Right now it seems easiest to keep using RO water for dunking a each plant, but I suspect this might not always be the case. 😁 I looked at muni water quality reports a while back — they didn’t look exceedingly bad here, but far enough from “perfect” quality to motivate me to get a simple portable RO kit from Ray. That kit is working well and it’s easy enough to make the RO water to meet my current needs, so I’ll carry on as I am for a while longer at least.

I might think about adjusting my fertilizer timing though. Because I figure that orchids in the wild mostly get a steady stream of “naturally fertilized” with each shower, rather than mostly non-fertilized showers interspersed with occasional “nutrient plus” showers, I’ve been opting to feed 1/8 doses of fertilizer with each dunking. I have no idea whether that thinking holds any water, though (see what I did there?!), and maybe I should apply fertilizers less frequently at higher doses …

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by BarleyTwist

I might think about adjusting my fertilizer timing though. Because I figure that orchids in the wild mostly get a steady stream of “naturally fertilized” with each shower, rather than mostly non-fertilized showers interspersed with occasional “nutrient plus” showers, I’ve been opting to feed 1/8 doses of fertilizer with each dunking. I have no idea whether that thinking holds any water, though (see what I did there?!), and maybe I should apply fertilizers less frequently at higher doses …

Actually, fertilizing lightly at each watering is great. That's indeed what orchids get in the wild. I can't do it... would need to incorporate the fertilizer in the sprinkler water (large investment) so I give a bit more less often. But what you're doing is perfect. Don't change it as long as you can manage it!