Rick
Well-Known Member
Ultimately I think the base understanding is how much nutrients actually flux through the environment that orchids grow in, and then understand the science that produced the fertilizer regimes that we ultimately were taught to use.
Bottom line is that the amount of nutrients that jungle orchids see in the wild is a fraction of the amount we use in culture (regardless of individual constituent level).
Present fertilization regimes were developed for corn (and wheat, rice, potatoes). Food crops that we want to grow VERY quickly and produce large amounts of sugary starchy fruit to eat, and then discard. All growth and maximum edible production in 9 months.
The primary use of K in plants is for sugar production.
Orchids have evolved to need VERY little carbohydrates and live virtually forever with very little energy output. The seed of orchids have no carbohydrate/starch stores to feed the embryonic orchid (they use mycorhrizae to feed the embryonic orchids until they gain their own photosynthesis). This is because K is actually very rare in the environment. Most K in plants is recycled from earlier growth and the fallen leaves of trees they grow near. Over hundreds of years the trees (with roots in the actual mineral layer and in contact with ground and interstitial water) dredge and concentrate minute quantities of K and get it up to the surface where terrestrial and epiphytic plants can access a very small supplement to the recycle rate.
Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and other plants are now fully domesticated. Because their life cycle is less than a year, humans have genetically selected for fast growth and high sugar production (which requires lots of K). Actually there is no such thing as wild corn. It is a mutant of only suspect ancestry that appeared coincidentally with the advent of humanity in the New World. It is completely dependent on the connection with humans to supply nutrients at a rate far in excess of what is available in the jungle.
This is where all the research dollars and science into plant nutrition has gone into, and us orchid hobbyist have just been piggy-backing on that research for the most part.
Low K was really the first step to see how much of the corn science was actually applicable to orchids. Realizing that, yes, many people have figured out how to make corn fertilizing work for some orchid species and hybrids under certain conditions can be done, but how can we apply what we know about orchids in the wild to improve on what we are doing for the species, and conditions that always seem to elude us.
Bottom line is that the amount of nutrients that jungle orchids see in the wild is a fraction of the amount we use in culture (regardless of individual constituent level).
Present fertilization regimes were developed for corn (and wheat, rice, potatoes). Food crops that we want to grow VERY quickly and produce large amounts of sugary starchy fruit to eat, and then discard. All growth and maximum edible production in 9 months.
The primary use of K in plants is for sugar production.
Orchids have evolved to need VERY little carbohydrates and live virtually forever with very little energy output. The seed of orchids have no carbohydrate/starch stores to feed the embryonic orchid (they use mycorhrizae to feed the embryonic orchids until they gain their own photosynthesis). This is because K is actually very rare in the environment. Most K in plants is recycled from earlier growth and the fallen leaves of trees they grow near. Over hundreds of years the trees (with roots in the actual mineral layer and in contact with ground and interstitial water) dredge and concentrate minute quantities of K and get it up to the surface where terrestrial and epiphytic plants can access a very small supplement to the recycle rate.
Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and other plants are now fully domesticated. Because their life cycle is less than a year, humans have genetically selected for fast growth and high sugar production (which requires lots of K). Actually there is no such thing as wild corn. It is a mutant of only suspect ancestry that appeared coincidentally with the advent of humanity in the New World. It is completely dependent on the connection with humans to supply nutrients at a rate far in excess of what is available in the jungle.
This is where all the research dollars and science into plant nutrition has gone into, and us orchid hobbyist have just been piggy-backing on that research for the most part.
Low K was really the first step to see how much of the corn science was actually applicable to orchids. Realizing that, yes, many people have figured out how to make corn fertilizing work for some orchid species and hybrids under certain conditions can be done, but how can we apply what we know about orchids in the wild to improve on what we are doing for the species, and conditions that always seem to elude us.