Homemade fertilizer

[BlakeeBoo]

Urea is a type of nitrogen but i don't know why some think it is bad for orchids. I think it is just a myth that has woven into orchid society through years of personal preferences getting mixed with actually orchid culture fact.

I may be wrong though so don't be to mean when correcting me.

[Royal]

Originally Posted by BlakeeBoo

Urea is a type of nitrogen but i don't know why some think it is bad for orchids. I think it is just a myth that has woven into orchid society through years of personal preferences getting mixed with actually orchid culture fact.

I may be wrong though so don't be to mean when correcting me.

Nobody here is mean. Nitrogen as urea requires a step or conversion to available nitrogen (into a from a plant can use). Since we grow our orchids in free draining media, any nitrogen needs to be available. If the fertilizer were to persist in soil, urea would eventually be converted by soil microbes - making it available. But since most of our orchid fertilzer just runs through the media and does not persist in "soil", there is minimal conversion from urea to usable N.

Oh, and some beers (stouts mostly) are bottled or canned with NO2, but most are carbonated. All "real" or natural beers are just bottle conditioned and are carbonated by continued yeast metabolism. I'm no orchid expert - but I know my beer!

[violacea]

Originally Posted by RoyalOrchids

Oh, and some beers (stouts mostly) are bottled or canned with NO2, but most are carbonated. All "real" or natural beers are just bottle conditioned and are carbonated by continued yeast metabolism. I'm no orchid expert - but I know my beer!

The magazine put forth by our local Orchid Society once ran an article by a medical doctor whose hobby was growing orchids. It was on "beering" his orchids. He takes everyone's leftover beer after a party and dilutes it, maybe ten times. And then splashes this over his orchids. I remember the phrase, "Orchids love beer!" he stated.

So I tried it, but only once. Orchids are so slow growing I didn't detect any positive response! What I'm saying is go ahead and try it if you want.

The difference between a delicate orchid trying to survive and those hardy ones in our gardens that grow like weeds and are near indestructable is that the delicate hothouse orchid might die with the beer on them.

Well, that's my two cents worth.

[violacea]

Originally Posted by BlakeeBoo

Urea is a type of nitrogen but i don't know why some think it is bad for orchids. I think it is just a myth that has woven into orchid society through years of personal preferences getting mixed with actually orchid culture fact.

I may be wrong though so don't be to mean when correcting me.

No, BlakeeBoo, you are not wrong. In Singapore where I am, there is a gardening book put forth by one of our Botanic Garden pioneers called Eric Holttum. He advocates using urine, a very valuable fertiliser which is full of urea, diluted 37 times and left to rot for a day. They throw this on all the orchids which bloom well and grow well with the treatment. Of course it stinks then, but you can always hose it off after the plant has drunk in the urea. When very dilute, there is no smell.

Hope this doesn't sound gross for those not used to the idea. It isn't done too often nowadays, though.

[Royal]

Originally Posted by violacea

No, BlakeeBoo, you are not wrong. In Singapore where I am, there is a gardening book put forth by one of our Botanic Garden pioneers called Eric Holttum. He advocates using urine, a very valuable fertiliser which is full of urea, diluted 37 times and left to rot for a day. They throw this on all the orchids which bloom well and grow well with the treatment. Of course it stinks then, but you can always hose it off after the plant has drunk in the urea. When very dilute, there is no smell.

Hope this doesn't sound gross for those not used to the idea. It isn't done too often nowadays, though.

OK, besides the grossness I have a few comments.

First, urine does contain urea, but not only urea. Animals excrete different compounds depending on the length and structure of the "loop of Henley", a feature of the kidneys. We have them, birds have them, cats and dogs have them. But our excretions are much different than that of birds and cats. Concentrations of N, urea, and uric acid differ greatly from genus to genus, and person to person (and day to day, hour to hour). Bottom line, human urine has nitrogen in many forms - but at an unknown concentration that can vary greatly.

Second, You say it sits and "rots" for a day. How much urea is being converted into available nitrogen in that time frame? I don't see how we could tell.

So, he starts with a questionable solution of unknown concentration then dilutes, it 37 times? Why not 38 or 36? It seems like a very specific yet arbitrary number.

PLEASE don't take this the wrong way! I'm not trying to be a smarty-pants. I'm just a skeptic. Forgive me!

[violacea]

Yes, Royal. I don't think you are trying to be smarty pants but appreciate what you said. All that has to be considered too.

Just be reminded we are dealing with hardy plants in the early days of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, and in the 90-degree-F heat, the compounds in the urine will rot. I have often wondered about the 37 times myself, put forth in the book "Gardening in the Lowlands of Malaya" - a very old book. It is about as scientific as letting leaves rot and putting this under the orchids (vandas, spathoglottis and arachnis, mostly) for compost. Just empirical fact. In those days, hardly anyone comes out of University to take on a horticultural job.

Holttum goes on to create the compost with urine too. One layer leaves, splash with urine, add more veggie material, splash with urine, add burnt wood ash. He's long dead so we cannot ask him. But the topic at hand is what fertiliser can you use without buying the stuff but make it yourself. So we go back to pioneer days.

Incidentally, my Filipina maid tried using urine on the orchids diluted as I suggested and the plants perked up and bloomed, dendrobiums mostly, so there must be something good and right in the recipe!

Be cautioned that we have hardy orchids. I don't want somebody's precious phalaenopses dying on account of taking up my ideas.

For phalaenopses, I have learned to use diluted Gaviota 63 to make leaves. This is a foliar feeder so I squirt the back of the leaves. I get this off the crown for fear of crown rot. When the plant looks healthily growing, I switch to Gaviota 67. Again at the back of the leaves. This is higher in potassium so it stimulates spikes. The spikes appear in the rainy season when the temperature is much cooler.

Somehow, there isn't any other fertiliser here to equal Gaviota so I am wondering what do you all use on your orchids. Or should this be another thread?

For organic feeding, there are brown pasty liquids derived from animal blood that we dilute and water the roots. Dendrobiums seem to go crazy with delight in this medium and throw out multi-spikes.

[Royal]

Originally Posted by violacea

Be cautioned that we have hardy orchids. I don't want somebody's precious phalaenopses dying on account of taking up my ideas.

This is the exception I spoke of in my earlier post. If an orchid is grown in soil or compost, the urea persists and has time to make that "step" and convert to available N. A Phal or any epiphyte grown in free-draining media or on a mount will only be able to use available N because the fertilizer doesn't persist as long.

I do know one reason why your orchids look great -- YOU LIVE IN SINGAPORE!!!

[violacea]

Originally Posted by RoyalOrchids

I do know one reason why your orchids look great -- YOU LIVE IN SINGAPORE!!!

I read that and had a guilty giggle.
Royal, my orchids are struggling to survive. Maybe it is my personality what is so perverse -- the orchids that grow well here are what I am indifferent to. I ignore oncidiums and neglect my dendrobiums. They bloom now and then despite my inattention.

But the orchids I grieve over are my phalaenopses and cattleyas (and all their intergeneric crosses). Let's face it, these are actually subtropical or temperate plants. I cannot get cool nights where I live - min night temp 25 C. Some nights fall to 23 C and I get excited thinking, "My orchids must be happy tonight!"

Sure enough, they throw out spikes soon, and then the hot dry days come, and my house has the wrong microclimate for them, and the stalks are short and the buds are few. Whites seem to do better. And any of the dark pinks, probably due to doritis parentage, since doritis (esmeralda?) can withstand more sun and heat.

Then all those evil weevils come to eat them up. I have snails and red mite. I refuse to use insecticide but try tea-tree oil without knowing the concentrations to use.

There is a supplier of phalaenopses here and going to their farm is like reaching orchid heaven! But the "farm" is a very large room, airconditioned, and with huge fans blowing air sideways into the room. Must cost the earth to upkeep them, so they are sold to us at higher prices. They buy compots and then grow them in separate pots until they bloom.

Dendrobes should do well, if you give them constant love and affection which was what my (late) father-in-law did with his orchids. And the commercial dendrobium growers (run by my husband's girl cousin and her husband) have acres under netting and overhead mist sprayers that come on four times a day!

They are all from three clones. Hardy. Good substance, good arrangement, etc everything a good orchid should be. And there are only three plain colours -- which they sell as Multico White, Multico Red and Multico Yellow. So many of them so that I find them deadly dull. Princess Diana ordered Multico White from their farm for her wedding bouquet. Ho-hum...

The farm is sold off to a friend now, so I don't have access to it. Or rather, what incentive have I to go there and not be recognised and welcomed?

The best orchids I have seen are grown by a girl with terminal cancer. She spent all her last days with them, watering, fertilising, spraying on bug killers. They were so fat and green and perfect without holes or a single flower out of place.

There are a lot of orchids that I miss seeing around here because they are passe. Long time ago since I saw species, and early crosses. No Vanda coerulea, Arachnis hookeriana, scented arachnis flos-aeris and the magnificent grammatophyllum speciosum - the tiger orchid. Lots of leaves and takes ages to flower. These can never be commercially grown and so are of no use to the modern money-minded orchid growers. Very sad.

Hence I love this topic -- trying to grow orchids without commercial fertiliser. BlakeeBoo, if you ever succeed, sell me some. The media I use is charcoal and brick but I stick some cubes of asplenium nidus root into the pot. Where did I get these? I have a humongous bird's nest fern growing in my garden and the roots are literally there for the picking. This can absorb whatever urea there is to release the nitrogen.

Okay, you all tell me about your orchids. What are you growing?

[POLKA]

Okay
Here I am, 10 months later after the last posting to this thread.
However, I would like to add my two cents:

The nitrogen cycle goes something like this
1--an organism dies and begins to rot into its component parts, for this case--protein. Or, it excretes waste materials from protein metabolism, including urea.
2--protein, by biological action (with or without soil), breaks down to urea.
3--urea breaks down to Ammonia
4--ammonia breaks down to Nitrates
5--soil organisms convert nitrates to nitrites (maybe this 4 and 5 is backwards), and is able to hold that in the humus.

Now--Orchids are perched in trees, usually. They get what comes their way. Waste products in dilute form slowly, and consistently while moist. Most plants, including most orchids, have enzymes that break down even large molecules like urea. They don't have to have the urea broken down. However, in warmth, urine (urea) turns to ammonia quickly (hence the singapore example above, and works well).

Whether urea, ammonia, or nitrate, orchids need their nitrogen because they reform orchid proteins from the nitrogen components of the molecule. And from these proteins, eventually the nitrogen cycle starts again.

Now--compost tea is excellent for any and all orchids. You can make it at home. Phals especially like the stuff. Catts, dendies, oncids, and grammatophylums too.

I hope I have helped in this matter.
Take care
May all your orchids bloom like crazy
Rex
aka Polka

[braveall]

deleted wrong posting