Good results watering with hot water.
 

I have been watering my orchids with hot water only from the sink and about once every two weeks or when I can remember. This seems to be working for me. I have a dendrobium nobile ( bark, charcoal, perlite ), two cattleyas, brassavola nodosa, zygo, rych - peach) and oncidium sherry baby.

I have seen good results all except the cattleya Redland sunset

Just curious....why would you water with hot water instead of room temperature?

Define "hot".

Ditto what they said.

Anything above about 80°F is a waste of energy, and much hotter could be damaging to plant tissues.

Let's not forget that "temperature" and "heat" are not the same - I can hold a 1000° piece of foamed silica and not get burned, but a 200° cup of water will, due to the much higher heat capacity of water.

I am curious and confused.

Idea must be brought to you by the same people that say "water with three ice cubes".

I use warm water on mine but make sure its not too hot . I grow phals and it seems to be ok they seem to like it warm.

I know people who are absolutely convinced boiling water in ice trays freezes faster than room temperature water in ice trays.

Well the hotter something is in relation to the ambient temperature around it, the faster the rate of cooling, so............a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

Um, not quite. Water at 99C would take longer to freeze than water at 80C. It's the The Mpemba Effect, named after Erasto Mpemba.

The water only needs to be warm enough so that the surface is kept liquid by convection, while the water freezes solid from the sides in and from the botttom up.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect

Or, this hot-is-better is from the company who is in competition with the ice cube people! ;-)

You missed the point. If you simultaneously put two equal sized samples of water into the same freezer, one at 20 C and one at 90 C, the 90 C sample will cool at faster RATE. Put simply, in order to freeze the 20 C sample must lose 20 C. The 90 C sample will lose 20 C and reach 70 C before the 20 C sample reaches 0 C and freezes.

I just turn the hot faucet on and let the plants soak or just run the water. It's gets hot enough where you want to pull your hands out quickly.

This is ultimately working for me & I wanted to do this because when I would soak my plants in tempid water, the water cooled down. I figure I would experiment with hotter water and when it was time to remove them, the water would still be warm.

I never have tried the ice cube method and never will.

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This technically means my hot watering might be a good thing since the roots dry off faster but have moisture from the medium used?

Warm water is fine but water that is too hot for your hands is also too hot for orchid roots. This practice is causing damage to the roots and over time it will likely end in dead roots.

I've heard of people using hot water in terrestrial plants in order to get rid of pests but even then they don't use overly hot water PLUS the roots are protected from the brunt of the hot water by the soil that surrounds them. Orchids roots don't have that same buffer. It might appear to be working for you right now but I suspect if your water is so hot you need to pull your hands out...in time you will have a big problem.

If you're soaking your orchids in water, the water doesn't have to be warm constantly. It doesn't even have to start out warm...you just don't want it to be ice cold.

:rofl:
Cool and I'll try this method. I have a few that have no place in my house...

Nope. Think about it. The two trays go into the freezer, one at 90C one at 20.

By the time the 90C tray reaches 20, the 20C tray will be at an unknown temp XC where X is less than 20C. By the time the 90 tray drops from 20C to XC the 20 tray will be at X-YC and so on. A bit like Zeno's tortoise.

The optimum temp would be the one that imparts JUST enough energy to the water to keep the surface open by convection.

There is a law of cooling, put forward by Newton, but it is Newton's law of FORCED cooling, so it isn't really applicable.

well I do like to water my plants with warm water although I do stick my finger in it to check its not too hot, I'm not into boiling my orchids roots.

I think the roots seem to be growing a bit faster with the warm water but I could just be deluding myself, maybe its my fertilizer with seaweed extract that's making the roots grow well.

I use an aquarium heater ( at pre-set temp ) to warm a 2g watering can and use this water for my plants indoors. I have no doubt that its made a difference to my plants, noticeably so with seedlings. Since I have raised all types of seedlings at different times with pre- and post heated water regimes ( as opposed to 'room temp' water), I feel that I can make that judgement call. The water is obviously at a consistent temp all year round.

I have been doing this for about 4 months and the roots are doing very well.

---------- Post added at 10:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:16 AM ----------

I ran out of fertilizer about two months ago. I do in fact feel the roots are doing better with the hotter water temp.
No I'm not boiling my orchid roots.

---------- Post added at 10:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:22 AM ----------

That's goods to know you have seen the difference with your plants.

I use an ultra weak fertiliser. It's possible that too strong a fertiliser will stunt roots.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown! Most of us do everything we can to duplicate the conditions in which each genus we grow lives in nature with only the addition of a compatible fertilizer. I do not recall rain coming in "burning my hand" temps! I think some common sense is called for here.
:twocents:

Oh yes.

Wait! WAIT! I can see it now: the newest market rage, "Just add steam..."

LOL!!

Sent from my KFTHWI using Tapatalk

I still can't get over the idea of watering plants with hot water to kill bugs. If it is hot enough to kill bugs, it will cook the roots, and if not, it's pointless.

I've done some traveling in tropical regions (Hawaii, Malaysia, Thailand and the Phillippines) and have been caught in rain showers. The rain is nice and cool, sometimes it feels very cool. In hot climates, I would think the orchids are accustomed to nice, cool refreshing rains so I don't see how they would prefer very warm water. But if it seems to work for you, then that is what matters I guess.

• Your skin's threshold for heat is a lot lower than when tissue damage occurs.
• There probably is a temperature for optimum benefits. Might even be a plant root cell function involved but I doubt it is high enough to be painful to human skin.
• Are you all taking about the Mpemba effect? I vaguely remember an experiment in Physics 101 (ancient history), hot water did ice faster (words can be tricky in law and science so I'll keep it vague).

many of you seem to want to make the point that, in your opinion, watering with "hot" water isn't common sense, isn't what happens in nature........and so on. You miss the point that in the actual experience of the OP, it has worked for a few months on all plants except maybe one.
I have come across this my way or the highway type of thinking on quite a few subjects and thus always like to learn firsthand ( if its worthwhile in my own situation, for example potting phals up to a certain size in tightly packed sphagnum moss. It works, despite many, many ridiculing opinions to the contrary ) before passing any judgement call.
OP ( ashleyma ), I am curious why you tried this method - had you been told something ? was it just an experiment ? If it works for you, then carry on. I am interested in what happens longer term so would appreciate an update in the future. Who knows, you may just be onto something.

Right now, we have an anecdote.

What we would like are specifics. To convince the skeptics, we will need scientific data.

And your sphag analogy, I have always accepted. It works for you and high volume commercial growers. It does not work for me. Just saying.

^^^ A scientist speaks.^^

Experimentation is great. The problem here is that there are so many variables. You'd need to disconnect all the other things that this grower does.

As for spaghnum, I make no secret of the fact that I don't like it. ALL of the orchids I have bought which were packed in Sphag had dead or dying roots. ALL the ones in bark were good.

You can make anything work if you put enough effort into it. When I kept koi there were always arguments over filtration. I used to say that it was perfectly possible to make a functioning filter from dog turds, if you used your brains.

Rotting and suffocating roots are a big killer. Overwatering in winter, the same. Why choose a medium that is hard to steer thru winter when coarse bark makes it impossible to overwater?

I've had good results watering with beer.:evil:

First or second hand? :rofl:

I would never do the hot water thing, too risky, and I can't see any possible benefit. I think this is a bad cultural practice to do intentionally. I water with either tap water, straight from the cold tap with no tempertaure adjustment, or rain water at ambient temperature.

Just to play devil's advocate a bit, with some orchids, specially adapted to these conditions, I have seen photos on another forum (Orchidgeeks) where orchids were growing on rock surfaces in full sun. Here is a link: confusion about FULL SUN??? - Orchid Forum Orchid Care This included "Doritis" (now considered within Phalaenopsis); check about 13 posts down in the linked web page. If you have ever touched natural rock "pavement" in full sun, these surfaces can get quite hot on the surface, and quickly. Rock is such a poor conductor of heat that the surface can get quite hot in the sun without the heat dissipating. The roots obviously have some tolerance to the heat; likely heat too hot to be comfortable to touch.

So, SOME orchids may be able to tolerate this kind of hot water treatment. Similarly, I can, and have, occasionally tolerated working outdoors for prolonged periods when temperatures were well over 100 F. Beneficial for me? Probably not. Doritis grows quite well when you don't bake the roots in the sun, so why would you subject a plant to this kind of stress?

I can't think of any reason why this hot water treatment would be advisable for orchids. I would need a lot of scientific proof to even think about trying this.

I keep my RO tank between 75° & 80°F. It's more of a benefit in winter than summer, but the plants seem to like it.

whatever hand works.....for you. Haha.

:blushing: Ehhmmm, ... to say the truth, both!


Just one word about orchid roots. Dry velamen does tolerate extreme conditions, i.e. hot rocks in the sun. Moist velamen will not tolerate hot (What is hot - boiling hot?) water as soon as the stored water rises at more than 43ºC, which is the tº at which most protein denature.

So, please, as already has been said, a bit of common sense, a beer, and a second hand!:biggrin:

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!

As "Mouse" said, we're all making a lot of assumptions. Ashley is having success, so who are we to challenge that?

I'd bet we all have images in our minds about what's going on, and we're likely all wrong!

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought one idea behind NOT using hot tap water is that when your tap water is heated in a metal water heater, it picks up minerals and other stuff from the basin and pipes more easily than cold water. Hot water from my tap tastes worse than cold water from my tap, for instance, and I don't use it in my kettle even though that may accelerate boiling because it leaves more scale in there. OP, are you using tap water or filtered water? Not to mention... it is summer. I don't know what the weather is like elsewhere but my orchids probably appreciate cooler water temps right now.

I used to use warmer water in the winter on my orchids but stopped, and I've seen some improvement that may or may not be contributed to that since.

if you have an electric water heater that has built up too many minerals on the heating element, you might be adding a bit, but it is unlikely to be appreciably greater than the incoming water, nor damaging.

I find that warming the water in winter is a major plus, especially to plants that truly like hot conditions, like phals.