And the 'Best' fertilizer for orchids is...

[limuhead]

None of the above. After experimenting with many different fertilizers and amendments over the years I have come to the conclusion that there is no best or better fertilizer. Here is why I believe what I believe. Proper culture, good water, and adequate light can't be remedied with fertilizers or amendments of ANY type. I have excellent growing conditions; great light, humidity levels, air movement. I have used Miracle Grow, Peters, MSU, K-lite, Fish Emulsion and maybe a dozen other products. I use and have used Calcium Nitrate, Epsom Salts, Dolomite, EM, Kelp, as well as a few other product to promote beneficial microorganisms to boost growth. The healthiest and most vigorous orchids I have are the ones growing in the mosses in my trees. They rarely get fertilizer, are watered when it rains(or occasionally when I have time or remember to hit them with the hose) and every once in a while get some insecticidal soap or a light dose of biological fungicide. Other than the plants in the trees my best plants are the ones in baskets with little or no media and tons of aerial roots. I think Lance of Gone Wild posted some pictures of wild orchid roots that were in mosses that were really kind of growing through them, not really attached. That pretty much confirms what I believe. Mounted orchids that I grow and Paphs and Phrags that are potted in a very loose mix(at least 30% large perlite) are doing really good but as far as fertilizer I have not seen anything that would make me believe that one is better than the other. As far as fertilizers are concerned the only measureable results I have seen are that ammonia/urea based fertilizers will give you rapid growth, but without enough light that growth will be soft and susceptible to bacteria and fungal problems because it has not had a chance to harden off; in other words if they grow too fast it weakens the plant as a whole. The maximum strength fertilizer I use is >100 ppm on hot sunny days in the summer. I flush my pots at least once a week, and by flushing, and I mean complete drenching, overflowing pots. I will saturate my entire collection and then repeat the process several times; waiting about 10 minutes between watering. This, more than anything will make a difference as far as fertilizers are concerned. Maybe under less than ideal conditions fertilizers make a real difference. When I joined this forum my intention was to become a better grower, which has happened thanks to a multitude of information provided by informed and exceptional people. I think the best way to grow the healthiest, vigorous orchids of any type is to do your best to simulate the natural environment that the orchid comes from; which granted is difficult at best to do. Of all the variables concerning orchid growing fertilizer is, in my opinion, the least important. Going outside to take a few pictures, will post some later. I am looking forward to feedback; pro and con in order to help myself as well as others become better growers(because that is what Slippertalk is all about... Right?)

 

[ehanes7612]

i am beginning to think the same thing..I think my achilles heel was growing in mostly CHC while giving too much light (concerning paphs) ..my phrags seem to do well in anything..now I grow in bark and about 1/3 perlite

 

[limuhead]

This is an unknown Dendrobium hybrid growing on my neighbors Ti leaf plant. Roots totally embedded in moss and lichens, spike or spikes on almost every growth, leaves, psuedobulbs, and roots growing like gangbusters, NEVER gets ANY fertilizer, water(other than rain), fungicide, insecticide, or other amendments.

 

[limuhead]

Dendrobium cumulatum in my Macadamia nut tree. Check out the roots growing up and through the moss. This, as well as all of the other orchids in my trees are ones that were struggling or fell out of the pots because of little or no roots...



It has been pretty much in bud or in bloom shortly after mounting in the tree. Pretty decent considering it is 'supposed' to bloom once a year...

 

[limuhead]

Dendrobium cuthbersonii that was all but dead. Stuck it in the moss on the Macnut tree. It had zero roots, and was losing leaves...



Less than 3 months later it has a bud developing and is locked in...

 

[limuhead]

Epigenium lyonii blooming on growths out of the pot. Everything in the pot is tattered; roots are history except those that are starting on the growths in mid-air. This one is going on the tree after it done flowering.

 

[Paphman910]

I totally agree!

I grow alot of my Paphs in a mixture of CHC, moss, charcoal and perlite.

My multifloral species do tend to grow about twice the size compared to someone who grows it locally in a greenhouse because I get constant light from the HID and warmth year round.

I decided to alternate with 25-10-10, 20-20-20, 10-52-10, and calmag each week. I also added osmocote 20-7-10 in my bark mix medium.

 

[limuhead]

Roots coming out of and going back in the basket of a Formosum Dendrobium hybrid. The basket has 2 or 3 chunks of large pathway bark; just enough to hold it stable while the roots are established. This is another plant that had no roots when it was 'mounted'. I say mounted because essentially that's what it is.

 

[limuhead]

Some assorted Phrags recently potted up from 2 inch to 4 inch pots. The media is 1/3 Kiwi bark, 1/3 CHC, and 1/3 large(#3) perlite. These plants exploded with new growth after transplanting. If you look closely you can see some 'light' areas on the leaves. Not sure what happened, but it corrected itself when I switched fertilizers and moved the plants into an area that gets more light. I don't think the fertilizer made a difference but we will never know because I changed multiple variables and the problem corrected itself...

 

[limuhead]

A while back I posted about getting a whole bunch of Cymbidium plugs. Here are a few of them. In my opinion more perlite + less fertilizer + more water = faster, but more importantly BETTER growth. The only thing that sucks is that the smaller plants that I put in 2 inch pots are going to need to go into 4 inch pots within a month or so...

 

[gonewild]

The only thing you said I disagree with is "there is no best or better fertilizer."

I've spent the last couple months looking at how orchids grow in the wild and specifically where their nutrients might come from. There is no doubt the nutrients come mostly from moss, lichens and the host tree. Some of the nutrients comes from dead leaves but I don't think enough to grow the plants.

Growing in Nature orchids get all the correct nutrients from entities, live moss live lichens, live tree bark and live fungus that decompose dead leaves.

The reason I disagree with "there is no best or better fertilizer." is because almost all orchids in collections are grown in dead or non living media. So to replace what a living media provides growers must supply artificial nutrient supplies. There is some fertilizer formula that best replicates what the living organisms provide in Nature and what ever that formula is it is "the best".

Your growing conditions are "Natural". The plants growing on your trees in association with lichen and moss get what they need without additional fertilizer. But very few growers have an environment that will support moss in contact with the roots.

Planting in a pot full of bark is about as far from natural as you can get. I say this because the bark is dead. It does not replace living tree bark. Moss does not grow below the surface around the roots. No orchid in Nature grows in a mass of bark chips. Most epiphytes have their roots growing attached to bark with the majority of the root exposed to air not buried in dead bark. The exposed root surface is most often in contact with living moss and lichens.

The ideal solution is to create an environment that would allow the plants to grow in or on a living media. But this is not feasible for most growers. As a substitute to the living media we must fertilize dead media with some form of nutrient supply.

The real secret to orchid nutrition lies in learning how the living media feeds the orchids and in what form the nutrients are supplied. I have my doubts that the nutrients come in the form of soluble salts but rather some other form, perhaps amino acids.

 

[Ray]

Limuhead - Holy crap, man! Learn to use the return key! Paragraphs are your friend.

You are biased, as you live in an environment where the conditions are so favorable, that variations in one or another aspect of growing is probably not that evident. For those of us growing in more "marginal" conditions, one little blip can have a big impact.

Lastly I'll most agree with you. I believe that nutrition is quite low down on the plants' "Maslow Hierarchy".

Lance - a l-o-n-g time ago, a retired organic chemist in Florida invented an organic liquid fertilizer (and I mean organic in the chemical way) that contained all of the required ions from a single component, and it was a chemical compound, not a solution. If I recall, it was a very complex-, or was based upon an amino acid. I had a couple of gallons, and they worked quite well. Too bad the guy went out of business.

 

[limuhead]

The only thing you said I disagree with is "there is no best or better fertilizer."

I've spent the last couple months looking at how orchids grow in the wild and specifically where their nutrients might come from. There is no doubt the nutrients come mostly from moss, lichens and the host tree. Some of the nutrients comes from dead leaves but I don't think enough to grow the plants.

Growing in Nature orchids get all the correct nutrients from entities, live moss live lichens, live tree bark and live fungus that decompose dead leaves.

The reason I disagree with "there is no best or better fertilizer." is because almost all orchids in collections are grown in dead or non living media. So to replace what a living media provides growers must supply artificial nutrient supplies. There is some fertilizer formula that best replicates what the living organisms provide in Nature and what ever that formula is it is "the best".

Your growing conditions are "Natural". The plants growing on your trees in association with lichen and moss get what they need without additional fertilizer. But very few growers have an environment that will support moss in contact with the roots.

Planting in a pot full of bark is about as far from natural as you can get. I say this because the bark is dead. It does not replace living tree bark. Moss does not grow below the surface around the roots. No orchid in Nature grows in a mass of bark chips. Most epiphytes have their roots growing attached to bark with the majority of the root exposed to air not buried in dead bark. The exposed root surface is most often in contact with living moss and lichens.

The ideal solution is to create an environment that would allow the plants to grow in or on a living media. But this is not feasible for most growers. As a substitute to the living media we must fertilize dead media with some form of nutrient supply.

The real secret to orchid nutrition lies in learning how the living media feeds the orchids and in what form the nutrients are supplied. I have my doubts that the nutrients come in the form of soluble salts but rather some other form, perhaps amino acids.

Couldn't agree with you more about the living environment, and I am really glad you replied. The moss you see my orchids growing in is starting to grow in some of my pots and other mounted plants. What do you think about inoculating pots with the moss(it grows everywhere here) and all but eliminating fertilizer? I bet I could make 1 bag of fertilizer last me the rest of my life if I could figure out the beneficial relationship between the moss and the orchids...

 

[TyroneGenade]

This thread on fertilizer gels so wonderfully with another thread wherein I imparted sage advice that I cannot help but point you in its general direction. The questions is "What fertilizer do you recommend" and the answer: http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=424827&postcount=10

 

[AdamD]

I grow in clear plastic pots. I almost never get moss on top of my pots but almost all of my plants have moss growing inside the pots, within a few weeks of repotting. I consider it a nuisance and try to control it with physan. Even my water containers once in a while will start growing algae, reminding me it's time for Physan. Should I discontinue this practice and let the tiny microhabitat do its own thing?

 

[limuhead]

I grow in clear plastic pots. I almost never get moss on top of my pots but almost all of my plants have moss growing inside the pots, within a few weeks of repotting. I consider it a nuisance and try to control it with physan. Even my water containers once in a while will start growing algae, reminding me it's time for Physan. Should I discontinue this practice and let the tiny microhabitat do its own thing?

I am not so sure about that one. One thing that I have noticed, and it may have a lot to do with my conditions, is that the healthiest, most vigorous potted plants I have all have some type of moss or algae growing in the pot or on the media. I am more inclined to believe, and again I have no proof other than what I see is that my orchids that are growing along with mosses, lichens and similar to how they grow in nature seem to be the healthiest. For the most part these are the ones that get little or no fertilizer. Look, I know that I am fortunate; if not blessed to have the conditions I have. I was just wondering if the relationships that are happening and promoting good orchid health could and should be focused on more. I, for one am interested in using less fertilizers and chemicals. If symbiotic relationships could be developed to work in pots then I think all orchid growers would be better off not using so many chemicals...

 

[gonewild]

Lance - a l-o-n-g time ago, a retired organic chemist in Florida invented an organic liquid fertilizer (and I mean organic in the chemical way) that contained all of the required ions from a single component, and it was a chemical compound, not a solution. If I recall, it was a very complex-, or was based upon an amino acid. I had a couple of gallons, and they worked quite well. Too bad the guy went out of business.

He was probably on the right track!
In the past I would have said no way that we had to stick to traditional fertilizer methods, but not now.... we need to look in different directions.

 

[Rick]

I have made the point ad-nauseum about following natures lead with regard to growing orchids. And that meant including the chemical environment (along with light, water, temps). The typical feed rates growers use are orders of magnitude greater than what they see in the wild. And now after arguing that point with us for the last year or so, you are making the same conclusion it seems.

In some ways K lite was just the stepping stone for many of the same conclusions I made when developing the concept in the first place. Mounted plants better than potted, folks growing great specimen plants with no supplementation at all. You just mentioned that you think growers would be better of using less chemicals. That's exactly what low K was all about!! It has less K and P than traditional balanced ferts, and it works fine.

I've linked multiple papers to this site on what orchids "see" chemically in the wild with regard to basic inorganic nutrients for the last couple years in the development of the low K concept, and it seems indirectly that you found that it works.:wink:

 

[gonewild]

Couldn't agree with you more about the living environment, and I am really glad you replied. The moss you see my orchids growing in is starting to grow in some of my pots and other mounted plants. What do you think about inoculating pots with the moss(it grows everywhere here) and all but eliminating fertilizer? I bet I could make 1 bag of fertilizer last me the rest of my life if I could figure out the beneficial relationship between the moss and the orchids...

YES!

If we could get the right moss species or lichen species and then manage an environment that would support those species we would not need fertilizer. As near as I can find out very little has been studied in this area. So we need to experiment.

I'm not sure how successful inoculating pots will be because what I am seeing in the wild plants is the actual contact between moss and roots. If the surface of the pot is covered in moss we don't know if the nutrients are carried down through the media by water. There might be a direct contact exchange between the moss surface and orchid root.
I have always encouraged moss to grow in my pots because the plants grow healthier. I assumed it had more to do with environment than nutrition but now I'm not so sure.

But perhaps all moss species do not have the nutrient benefit. Maybe it is more to do with lichen that grows on the moss?

And now consider that many growers use sphagnum moss and don't get the benefit. Sphagnum moss is a bog plant and not the same as epiphytic moss. Sphagnum moss is almost always dead in potting media.

The way to use moss to advantage is to figure out how to grow live moss around our orchid roots. For most people this might be impossible because of the humidity and light requirement moss has, not easy to accomplish on a window sill.

For most growers we need to find the correct nutrient ratio to use in fertilizer to substitute for the natural supplies. This is where the "best" fertilizer point of view comes to play. Rick's approach at using leaf litter content as a basis to determine the K-lite ratio is spot on. Now we need to compare that to what comes from mosses and lichens and if needed adjust the numbers.
Where the low potassium part enters into play is in it's toxicity to micro fauna. The micro fauna (bacteria, funji, moss, lichen, ect) probably are important to the root nutrient exchange.
My question is why are there lichens growing on or near every wild orchid I look at and never on orchids growing in pots?

We need to keep an open mind and try new ideas and not rely on proven science.

 

[gonewild]

This thread on fertilizer gels so wonderfully with another thread wherein I imparted sage advice that I cannot help but point you in its general direction. The questions is "What fertilizer do you recommend" and the answer: http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=424827&postcount=10

Fairys play an important role in orchid nutrition. Problem with your method is that you grind up the Fairys. Create an environment and allow the Fairys to live and they carry little buckets for food to each orchid root.
(I hope the Mother does not punish me for letting this slip)
:wink: