Sugar in water when repottin
 

Hi, I went to a workshop about orchids last week end and the speaker told us about an orchid grower in Azores who told him that mixing some sugar in the water when soaking the orchid roots before repotting helps the roots and its good for the plant. however, he said he had no scientific explanation for this, and wasn't sure about the benefits. Anyone has ever heard abut this?

In extreme cases, some sugar in water may help plants to recover. However, I suspect for the most part, this will tend to cause issues with bacterial/fungal growth if the sugar is not quickly removed from the plant afterwards. (i.e. replanting a plant that's still covered in sugar water).

Certainly, irrigating a potted plant with sugar water would be a very bad idea; this sugar water treatment would only be done while the roots of the plants were being soaked out of the growing medium (or perhaps even as a soak prior to the removal of old medium).

I did once soak some plants that had sat in a post office inside a box for a month in some slightly sugary water (with various other fertiliser nutrients and some superthrive); I think I used about 1 tsp of sugar per litre of water. Amazingly, only one of them died (n=3).

Given the way that culturing plants in vitro works, they're certainly capable of taking up sugars via the roots, but whether all roots are equipped with the right channels, I don't know.

In one of my orchid books this is suggested as well. For bare root plants before they are potted. But I would rinse them off before potting as it could attract bugs and as mentioned leaded to bacterial/fungal problems.

I prefer to use SuperThrive or seaweed solution in the water when roots are in trouble and it seems to work well.

I think rooting hormones & orchid plant food are a safer choice to use instead of sugar...oh the bugs, I would have a trail of ants..(yikes)

thanks for the replies!