KELPAK

[FrankP999]

Thanks Ray,

I am trying Kelpak on a pre-bonsai rough bark japanese maple that has not put out much growth this year. I am fertilizing with MSU+kelpak and also doing foliar feeding. I have been pleased with kelpak on my orchids and I have high hopes for the maple. I will let you know howit works.

Frank

[tucker85]

One word of caution when using seaweed products. These products benefit orchids in several ways but one of the most obvious is that orchids produce larger, more abundant roots. The results are mostly positive, especially for orchids grown in open baskets or on mounts. But I’ve found that orchids in enclosed pots can actually produce so many roots that they can choke off air circulation and some roots start dying. My solutions have been to put more of my orchids in open baskets and to decrease the amount of seaweed I use on orchids in pots. I’m not sure whether it’s best to use a lower concentration of seaweed or to use it less often on orchids in pots. Right now I’m experimenting with using seaweed once or twice a month on potted orchids while I continue to use it every week on orchids that are mounted or in open baskets. I’ve used seaweed products for several years but I’m still experimenting on the best way to use it.

[Ray]

I am trying an experiment:

I just redid my terrarium, and am going to give a couple of clusters of Dendrophylax lindenii a try in it.

The environmental is about 80°-85° most of the time, with essentially 100% humidity, and no air movement to speak of, lit by two 24W 2' T5's about a foot above them, giving them somewhere in the 500-1000 fc light level.

I got the plants from Oak Hill, and they said they spray them periodically with whatever fertilizer solution they happen to be using. Here's my experiment: Once a day, a pump comes on that pumps a K-Lite fertilizer+Kelpak solution to the top of the EcoWeb back wall, through which it trickles down to the bottom to flood the LECA, which wicks the solution to the sphagnum in which other plants are growing. The ghosts, mounted on grape vine, get dripped on for about 30 minutes, so are automatically watered.

Thoughts?

[empiref]

Your experiment is too technical for me Ray to give it any constructive thoughts.

I hope it will work out for you, and please give us your feedback and results.

All I can that I am having beautiful results with Kelpak, one of my Phals is spiking for the second time this year!

[Ray]

I suppose I was mostly thinking about the plants. Kelpak applied daily to the leafless wonders....

[bballr4567]

Finally took pictures of my Pot. Burana Beauty. It has the most obvious signs of improvement of all the orchids because you can see the roots growing out of the medium.







As you can see, the root tips are almost 1/2" long. There is around 70 new root tips growing right now and all three of the new pbulbs have bigger leaves and taller canes than the rest.

[empiref]

Originally Posted by bballr4567

Finally took pictures of my Pot. Burana Beauty. It has the most obvious signs of improvement of all the orchids because you can see the roots growing out of the medium.







As you can see, the root tips are almost 1/2" long. There is around 70 new root tips growing right now and all three of the new pbulbs have bigger leaves and taller canes than the rest.

Great success, congratulations.
how long have you been using Kelpak for and in what concentration?

[RosieC]

Wow!

[tucker85]

That's pretty typical of what I've seen when starting to use seaweed. For some reason it seems to affect some orchids more than others. Most orchids will produce a flush of new roots like that but occasionally I find one or two orchids that don't respond to seaweed in that way. I think seaweed is an amazing product for orchid growers.

[bballr4567]

I've been using kelpak for about two months now. The pbulbs just started to mature so they always throw out roots like that but this time it's about double the amount plus larger root tips.

I've been using about half a capful to 28 oz. Not sure of the ratio right now but it's close to what Ray recommended.