K-lit after 6 months

[ALToronto]

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I wrote exactly that above

Sorry Mike, I meant to address Trithor.

 

[Rick]

Rick, a control is important in any study. Mike's growing conditions are too different from those of the Cornell study to just use the Cornell results.

I guess if we are going to get serious about controls then need to add a negative control with no supplementation. I know a little old lady in Shelbyville, TN that has a few thousand plants that have NEVER received supplementation beyond what's in her well water. She has many specimen plants that have been in her collection as far back as 1958.

 

[Rick]

This is exactly the problem with observational studies - results cannot be aggregated.

Even the scientist on the Koch brothers payroll finally agreed with the data on Global warning. I guess he would have been easier to convince if there was a control in the first place.

That's why legitimate understanding can be accomplished by comparison of reconstructed historical baseline conditions.

To bad nature just doesn't happen only when we have time to think about it and plan the investigation. :wink:

 

[TyroneGenade]

I guess if we are going to get serious about controls then need to add a negative control with no supplementation.

Hmm... another good point. But I'm still perplexed about what exactly will be measured for comparison?

 

[ALToronto]

I guess if we are going to get serious about controls then need to add a negative control with no supplementation. I know a little old lady in Shelbyville, TN that has a few thousand plants that have NEVER received supplementation beyond what's in her well water. She has many specimen plants that have been in her collection as far back as 1958.

Well, that's not exactly zero supplementation. Well water has plenty of calcium and sulphur, likely magnesium and possibly even nitrates. Some poorly maintained wells have organic matter as well. Short of taking a trip and testing this lady's well water, I don't think we should condemn a group of seedlings to death by starvation.

It's also possible that she uses solid supplements of some sort.

 

[Rick]

Well, that's not exactly zero supplementation. Well water has plenty of calcium and sulphur, likely magnesium and possibly even nitrates. Some poorly maintained wells have organic matter as well. Short of taking a trip and testing this lady's well water, I don't think we should condemn a group of seedlings to death by starvation.

It's also possible that she uses solid supplements of some sort.

Actually I tested the water for basic mineral chemistry, N and TOC. It's drinking water standard with regards to N and TOC (less than a couple ppm Nitrates or TKN. TOC less than 4 ppm. PO4 is non detect.

Hardness is high, and middle TN hardness is sulfate based. Conductivity was around 400 uS/cm. At this point, most of her plants have broken out of pots so roots have take over the benches. She throw's a lot of cypress mulch around, and some stuff still in pots is in a cypress mulch mix with charcoal and spongerock. Nothing else. Her basic philosophy is "if you feed it, all the growth goes into vegetation and not into blooms".

I really don't agree with her to that extent. But she ran a successful cut flower/corsage business in the 60's and 70's. She gets no shortage of blooms.

However, if you look at the table I supplied on stemflow values in Borneo, orchids there are growing on not much at all there either.

Stone keeps saying that the amount of NPK in our mixes is so high, it giving us a false impression of how much K we are really feeding, so I think the negative control is just as viable as the standard MSU baseline to compare to a low K alternative.

I still didn't see what the base water is at Trithor's place.

 

[Rick]

I think we have three important questions:
1. Do Paphs survive better with K-light
2. Do Paphs grow better with K-light
3. Do Paphs flower better with K-light

With seedlings we can have a result to 1 & 2 in as little as 12 months and an answer to 3 in only a few years.

Actually blooming better was not a consideration of low K feeding except for reducing the incidence of "blooming to death", and blooming consistently from season to season without dying.

I heard it again at an orchid show last week, that getting a quality award on a plant is the "kiss of death". Maybe just ugly rumor, but I've heard it multiple times over the years that the majority of plants receiving quality awards (not cultural awards) are dead after a few years.

Leaf length is comparison to the control length. You could also do a count of new growths.

Even my hybrids and line bred species are doing better under this regime, but unless you don't believe in evolution, the production of plants by seed is a pretty heavy duty selection process from day 1. So the more generations of breeding, you are selecting plants that are adapted to what you throw on them. The best effects are going to be for species that historically have poor survival rates, under a particular feeding regime. So if you want to see results (like Bjorn was getting) start with something that already has a poor chance of doing good under the old regime.

 

[Trithor]

I am going to have to re-read this whole last part carefully in the morning with a cup of coffee rather than a glass of wine!

 

[dodidoki]

I think we have three important questions:
1. Do Paphs survive better with K-light
2. Do Paphs grow better with K-light
3. Do Paphs flower better with K-light

I didn't thought that I would start this long argument with my experiences....
I would like to tell everything:
I have no any financial interest about K-lite. I only wrote my experience, I would have written , if I had bad results to avoid you from a wrong way of orchid growings.But this way seems to be very good, anyway. I wrote period of application for seeing clear.

For me first is surviving of plants, without K-lite many of died. Most of dieing were because of bacterial or fungal rot. While I use K-lite rot problems are extremely rare if any ( I can't remember one for several months).

Many plants what could survive my bad conditions get much more better since I use K-lite.

Flowering is question of time, I think first few months are recovery time, but many of my plants are in sheath or developing mature size growths with VERY STRONG root system.

I have to say many more: MY EXPERIENCE OF K LITE IS EXCESSIVE ROOT FORMING.

 

[Rick]

Keep in mind the low K system was designed to solve problems and performance shortcomings from the old MSU regime. I didn't come up with this to win show awards.

The positive effects I noted to stuff doing what I perceived as fine from the start are certainly a big bonus that I'm not going to complain about.

But if you are perfectly happy with your old regime, then by all means stick with it.

With regards to formulating a study plan, then look into your program and find out what you are dissatisfied with, and quantify what you want the improvement to be.

If you want to reduce seedling mortality then counting seedling mortality and growth rate is the way to go.

Do you think your overall collection mortality rate is too high. That's easy to quantify.

I believe Justin's primary goal was to reduce the incidence of Erwinia rots in his collection. Loss to disease or frequency of interventions to control disease is also easy to quantify.

You want to spend less time repotting and $ in preventive maintenance chemicals? That's also easy to quantify.

You want to try the "hard and slow growing species" but shied away from poor past experience These are the prime ones to get into a study like this.

Don't waste your precious time and space on a bunch of easy oncidium, catt or phal hybrids.

 

[dodidoki]

Don't waste your precious time and space on a bunch of easy oncidium, catt or phal hybrids.

Many thanks for mentioning this!!!!

I noticed that my father's phala hybs are going very well with enormous amount of roots, leaves and flower stems. ( some of them was 30 cm LS when was bought, but now 50-60 cm LS "giga" phala now!!!)
In windowsill, low humiditiy, tap water and traditional fertilizer......and I heard about K-lite, tried it and saw it works...and I begun to think, how about my father's phalas???? And while I dealt with orchids for many years, even phalas got wrong at me...

Here is solution: TAP WATER, full of Ca and Mg + traditional fertilizer, it is just a "modified K-lite formula" with higher cc, but phalas like it. Slippers need lower cc. But I tried RO or rain water with trad. fert., caused Ca and Mg def., secondary P def., rots and so on....and even phalas suffered.

 

[dodidoki]

And another modification of your way as I wrote previously is continous fertilizing without interruption but weaker cc of fertilizer ( not with 150 only with 100 ppm but with every waterings), it fits closer to natural way of orchid-feeding, I think.

 

[Stone]

At the moment, by far my biggest problem in growing paphs is that some seedlings for some as yet unknown reason, decide to completely stop growing. They just sit there for month after month after month and do nothing. Many slowly lose their roots and any new leaves become smaller and smaller until there is nothing left. No matter what you do nothing seems to help. Stop feeding, plant in moss, keep wet, keep dry, keep warm...nothing.
Lance Burke calls them snitches and recommends throwing them out as soon as you identify them. But I still hope to find a miracal cure for this problem or at least the cause.
One thing I've noticed is that if you don't get continual growth out of flask, there is a higher risk of this happening.
I'm actually hoping that it is a high K concentration that has something to do with it but I fear it is something else entirely.
Any thoughts most welcome!

 

[consettbay2003]

When Terry Root owned The Orchid Zone he used to ruthlessly cull weak growing seedlings.

 

[TyroneGenade]

Actually blooming better was not a consideration of low K feeding except for reducing the incidence of "blooming to death"...

...Leaf length is comparison to the control length. You could also do a count of new growths.

Even my hybrids and line bred species are doing better under this regime, but unless you don't believe in evolution, the production of plants by seed is a pretty heavy duty selection process from day 1....

Ah! Ok, so leaf length and new growth as measures. I think new growths would be a good indication over all health of the plant so that could work nicely.

I take your point about the linebreeding of the plants and their adaptation to our conditions. Perhaps the success of bulldogs is that in their breeding went a lot of Paphs that had descended from the trees and rocks to survive in the nutrient loaded dirt? Your idea of using plants that fair poorly is a good idea but the danger is that people will turn around and then say "well, it just had specialist needs that you have now met." It may be a good idea to include a hardy Paph as well that anyone can grow to make the case that they grow better on K-light?

 

[Rick]

and then say "well, it just had specialist needs that you have now met." It may be a good idea to include a hardy Paph as well that anyone can grow to make the case that they grow better on K-light?

That's just fine if it doesn't pan out on the "specialists needs" issue.

I'm finding toughies all the time that would die like flies in the old days are doing good now. Case in point are those South Pacific paphs like mastersianum, papuanum, and violacea. Also things like emersonii and vietnamense were considered slow and speciallized.

Since it's really tough for a hobbyist to split out parts of a collection for special programs, the easy stuff will be in the mix anyway.

That's why I listed those as bonus surprises when I started going low K.

 

[Rick]

Humidity (as % RH) in the growing area must be tracked as an environmental parameter.

I have seen little evidence that low K feeding has made it possible to do better with orchids if your growing environment is too dry to start with.

 

[Trithor]

Sitting quietly at the farm waiting for the game capture crew to pack nod go, has given me the opportunity to re-read this thread.
It was never my intention to do a strict comparison between k-lite and any particular fertilizer. Years ago my fertilizer was similar to my 'control' fertilizer, then I switched to a new product which as one of the differences had an extremely high K, and was formulated for tomatoes (don't ask me why I started using it, it still confuses me!) I noticed a definite change in growth, some plants stopped completely, there was a definite increase in bacterial and fungal rots, and less flowers. I have never changed my source of water, or my frequency of watering, also no changes in pots, potting medium, or air circulation. The only change was the fertilizer. Now I am effectively changing one half of the plants back to the old fertilize (hopefully I will see an improvement on this side back to original vigor and flowering) the k-lite side will be the surprise, I hope to see an even better improvement in these plants. I understand fully that the difference will not be directly attributable to a low K, and may be due to increased Ca and Mg. I also understand that in the absence of a water test a lot of the results will be difficult to interpret.
If after a full season I see one side doing significantly better than the other, then I will switch both to that fertilizer for a while, and then change another component (perhaps the Ca and Mg).
I have sent away two samples of water away for testing (why two, ... I have noticed that there is a difference in the taste of our tap water over a cycle of about 21 days, perhaps something to do with how they chlorinate the supply) I should have the results on my desk when I return to town later in the week.
Again it was never my intention to prove if k-lite works, or to perform a strict scientific study, simply to find a formulation that works better than my previous formulation under my conditions. There are currently over 7000 plants involved, most of them paphs, with a range in size, species/hybrid and all of them mixed up on the various benches. Obviously another factor which I could change would be the water source, but until I get the results, that would be pointless. I might well find that certain groups perform better on the one side than the other, and others perform visa versa. Time will tell.

 

[Stone]

Sitting quietly at the farm waiting for the game capture crew to pack nod go,

I want to hear about the game capture crew and the farm!

 

[shadytrake]

When Terry Root owned The Orchid Zone he used to ruthlessly cull weak growing seedlings.

The problem is that some of those weak growing seedlings are nursed to BS and then sold to unsuspecting newbies for a fair price. I cull as best I can, but when I spend a fair amount on a species or hybrid I don't want to throw it out until it is past the point of no return. That is why I am desperately trying to get my Phrag Wossen to turn around.

Case in point: I have killed 5 Den tobaense to the tune of about $150 and I just screwed up my 2nd flask of Paraphal denevei by making a stupid mistake. If I could find it as a seedling, I think I would pass up deflasking but I can't find it anywhere.