Trying to recover Oncidium Orchids
I purchased these two oncidiums last year as a gift for my Mom. Well, I bought them for her but i love orchids so I figured it would be a cool thing to learn to grow them together. Long story short, I've taking over their care since they have never bloomed.
Both plants have recently been re potted loosely in Chilean sphagnum moss. The one with the stake lost most of it's roots due to root rot (previous re potting was too dense in same media, not enough air flow and not enough light) so it's there to help stabilize the plant.
The current setup is in a planting tray with one layer of glass marbles covered with one layer of LECA clay balls with the ventilated plastic pots sitting on top. In addition I have a tiny house fan set on low about 5ft away from the pots to help with airflow. In terms of light exposure, I live in Northern Virginia, the plants are in an east facing UV glazed bay window and they receive about 4 hrs of direct sun per day.
I've read about the weakly weekly fertilizing philosophy but am a kinda curious about a couple of things. One, I'm still getting used to watering orchids on their schedule and not mine, essentially when they need it. Looking for silvery roots and plump pseudobulbs. Also, with my current setup, when monitoring the moisture of the planting media, I need to lightly water them(fully soak sphagnum but not dunk for 5-10minutes) every 2-3 days. So what I've been doing is every other watering I just use plane DI water instead of my premixed fertilizer.
So far, seems thing to be looking better and I'll try to post more photos of these during the day. If there is anything wrong with what I'm doing, I'm more than open to suggestions to remedy the situation. Thank you all for your time.
|
Threaded Mode
