Quote:
Originally Posted by MateoinLosAngeles
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I fertilize with every watering in the spring and fall; during winter, I mostly water with plain water, and in summer, I fertilize at every other watering or less. During winter I may mix some RO water with tap water which adds calcium carbonate.
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I know there's more
advanced discussion going on here, and I'm not the most experienced, but sometimes it's not wrong to keep it simple.
What MateoinLosAngeles said is basically what I've concluded for my orchid culture.
Pretty much all of the orchids I have are ones that want to be wet and then left alone to let their medium dry. In winter, watering less is necessary because you could say orchids are like people; who likes being wet and cold?
As for fertilizing, since I mostly have Vandaceous orchids and some Dendrobiums that are in sphagnum moss, so come spring time I fertilize every other watering to avoid unwanted mineral build up.
For the orchids in bark or looser mediums that won't hold on to water like moss does, I'll water every watering.
The above is in line with what Ray mentioned.
The only other thing I've seen is "if the orchid is growing, you should give it fertilizer." So an example would be Neos, they're just chilling for the winter and not growing so I just water them with plain water. My Phal on the other hand is growing new leaves and roots, so I fertilize it. I'll just use K-Lite for fertilizer at the recommended amount, maybe I mix in some Kelpak or Quantum Total from time to time or some calcium supplement if need be.
I think the only times I've seen people need to add more of something like nitrogen or calcium or whatever else is when something funky is happening with your plant (bud blast, abnormally stunted growth, etc.) and the rest of the culture is fine, or if you have a plant that wants more calcium than the others or something to that extent.
Maybe there's a super optimized method of doing things, but I don't grow anything professionally and have so far haven't had many problems following the basic advice, so why give myself more things to think about than I already do?
Probably wasn't the simplest explanation, but...yea.
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