Yellowing/Mottling - Culture issue?

[Carebear2]

I grow my orchids very differntly, no S/H, no tap water, no kelpmax, no citric acid, no calmag.

To me it is far more important to get the PH right and use rain water so the orchids can absorb the Nutrients they need (rain water generally has a better PH naturally than tap without having to adjust it). Adding Nutrients if the PH is off means the plant cannot absorb the nutrients and they build up as salts in the pot.

I never have my roots sitting in water but that seems to be a personal preference on this board - you do say that your roots are rotting though. If you are going to flush and water daily anyway, maybe avoid using S/H which prevents air reaching the bottom of the pot. It would prevent as much rotting in future.

[Ray]

Originally Posted by Carebear2

I grow my orchids very differntly, no S/H, no tap water, no kelpmax, no citric acid, no calmag.

To me it is far more important to get the PH right and use rain water so the orchids can absorb the Nutrients they need (rain water generally has a better PH naturally than tap without having to adjust it). Adding Nutrients if the PH is off means the plant cannot absorb the nutrients and they build up as salts in the pot.

I never have my roots sitting in water but that seems to be a personal preference on this board - you do say that your roots are rotting though. If you are going to flush and water daily anyway, maybe avoid using S/H which prevents air reaching the bottom of the pot. It would prevent as much rotting in future.

I’m sorry, but I have to correct some misinformation in this.

Rainwater is pure water, which - as-is - has a pH of 7. As it falls through the air it absorbs gases and particulates that can affect the pH. After absorbing carbon dioxide, the equilibrium pH is 5.8, but the carbonic acid formed in that reaction is very weak, so anything you add to the water can easily affect the pH.

The pH of the solution - unless it is far off from the preferred 5.5-6.5 - has no bearing on whether the nutrient ions can be taken up. If it is in solution, it can be absorbed by the plants.

The buildup of minerals in a pot is a matter of concentration and evaporation, not pH.

Swimmy’s - I mean “Carebear2’s” last paragraph is nonsense. A plant grown in semi-hydroponics (which he admits never doing, so doesn’t know anything about) does not have its roots “sitting in water”, and air can reach all of the roots. The fact that there is water in the bottom of the pot is irrelevant.

For the record, this response in NOT in defense of S/H culture; it is an attempt to correct the dissemination of useless, incorrect drivel.

[kmccormic]

Originally Posted by Carebear2

I never have my roots sitting in water but that seems to be a personal preference on this board - you do say that your roots are rotting though. If you are going to flush and water daily anyway, maybe avoid using S/H which prevents air reaching the bottom of the pot. It would prevent as much rotting in future.

Thanks for replying Carebear2! This is semi-hydro and the whole point is for there to be water at the bottom of the pot. If you look at the lecca picture, you can see all the roots are above the water-line. The new roots are growing down just barely to the water line. There's plenty of air and the lecca beads wick the water up about 3/4 of the pot. I'm only going to flush (fill to top of all beads, and then let drain through the holes) the s/h plant daily to try to correct the salt-buildup I'd been accidentally poisoning it with.

My other plants are not s/h, they're in bark/coconut/etc and will still get watering-can watered depending on temps, but I'm trying to let the media dry out a bit in-between watering. I just don't do "feeding" except on weekends due to time restrictions. Because Texas has one long summer and a short winter I wanted to try out semi-hydro to see if that kept some of the heat stress at bay. So far.... I'm not seeing leaf wrinkling or desiccation like I might with my non-s/h if I miss checking on them for a day, which is truly exciting!! If I can get this technique down, I might slowly switch my whole collection to s/h.

---------- Post added at 03:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:00 PM ----------

Estacion Seca, Camille1585, WaterWitchin, Ray, SouthPark:
The roots you're seeing are the same roots as when I originally potted (except for the greenish ones with algae - those are new.) They were the dark brown but firm ones left over from trimming before the potting - a huge ton were still good. Probably many are gone now though due to adaptation. Constant distilled water is difficult, I'm on an upper apartment floor and getting gallons up beyond groceries - ugh! I can’t fit a R/O unit in my tiny kitchen. I'm definitely going to start flushing it daily with as much distilled as I can manage, if not, at least tap water.

I would hate to add more stress to it before it recovers a bit by putting it through an unpot to trim. Hrm... If I do unpot and trim, think I should use Physan to clean the lecca or remaining roots before I repot or would that get absorbed and also stress the roots out? I don't know if the algae isn't also providing some stress.

Thank you for this advice!

[SouthPark]

kara - if you can see positive signs - as in new roots are just growing more and more, and since you are flushing daily, then that should be ok. Seeing good progress like that is fine. And besides - you're watching the orchid like a hawk - so it should be ok to just keep doing what you're doing right now.

If you do have leca (removed from the orchid pot that is) ----- one way to clean is to put leca balls in a metal bowl with leca filled up with tap water ------ then put on the boil for a short time.

Also - since there's no nasties (pathogen) attacking your orchid, then just a good dry-out of the leca should be just fine too (without boiling/heating leca).

While growers used to (and maybe still do) use physan on their plants ------ I personally wouldn't put that sort of disinfectant on my orchids - especially not on the roots. Things like physan and hydrogen peroxide ----- I think is best to avoid that on roots.

[WaterWitchin]

Originally Posted by kmccormic

...
The roots you're seeing are the same roots as when I originally potted (except for the greenish ones with algae - those are new.) They were the dark brown but firm ones left over from trimming before the potting - a huge ton were still good. Probably many are gone now though due to adaptation. Constant distilled water is difficult, I'm on an upper apartment floor and getting gallons up beyond groceries - ugh! I can’t fit a R/O unit in my tiny kitchen. I'm definitely going to start flushing it daily with as much distilled as I can manage, if not, at least tap water.

I would hate to add more stress to it before it recovers a bit by putting it through an unpot to trim. Hrm... If I do unpot and trim, think I should use Physan to clean the lecca or remaining roots before I repot or would that get absorbed and also stress the roots out? I don't know if the algae isn't also providing some stress.

Thank you for this advice!

I don't think you really need to be flushing it daily. Flushing it with pure water of some sort, for a phrag, is fairly essential. Time and not using excess fertilizers, etc, on it will recover the plant. The algae doesn't stress anything, other than aesthetically.

If you can only lug so much water up the stairs, do it for your paphs and phrags. I thought I had high pH. Yours beats mine if it's going above 9. When I first started growing them, and was still using tap water, it was a struggle. RO water was my saving grace to be able to grow them well.

I don't think repotting to trim it is necessary, but repotting it to get it away from the LECA that possibly has quite a bit of accumulated mineral buildup would. So were it mine, I would carefully repot. That's the beauty of semi-hydro... repotting isn't as stressful.

Physan or hydrogen peroxide on the roots. I wouldn't. No need for the Physan, and using hydrogen peroxide on the roots used to be a big thing in the orchid world... not so much anymore. Similar to why we don't put peroxide on open wounds anymore. We've learned better. There are several threads on here regarding peroxide. Here's one... SaraJean asked a question about peroxide...

Kansas summers are hot, hot, hot. I grow everything in semi-hydro now, and have for years. It made all the difference since mine are outside six months of the year. Likely you have more orchids that would appreciate it.

[B727]

Originally Posted by kellyandreas71

...and 9.5-12 ph...

@Admins
Please delete this post, thx