Good fun and THE GAUNTLET

[orcoholic]

Orcoholic, how often are you fertilizing?

I fertilize at every watering - which is a 2-3 times/ week in the summer and 1 or less times/week in the winter. The plants on cork are watered more often.

 

[Stone]

Funny Mike every plant I've ever gotten from QF,HOF out of Hawaii has had plenty of moss and they are the finest grown plants I've come across. Ask Limuhead, Fred, in Hawaii mosses are unavoidable.
I can't recall ever loosing a plant due moss growing in association with the plant. Lost plenty due to algae, esp the slimy ones but that was due to excessive fertilzer feeding the algae rather then the orchid.

Rick, I can only stand by my point. Generally speaking the orchids I've seen which where heavily contaminated with moss and or ferns for an extended period have weak growths due to roots slowly suffocating in a sour growing medium. It's fine and probably necessary in the habitat but it breaks down in greenhouse cultivation. Certainly there is no need or benefit from it. The paphs in the background of Bjorn first picture of the kovachii illustrates my point. Those plants are suffering. The moss should be removed and and toped with fresh clean media and they will be the better for it.
The plants from Hawaii are all grown outside where there is not only good air movement but wind. This goes a long way in keeping the medium fresh.
I think it is inevitable that you and other moss fans will eventually come to the same conclusion as me.....I hope
BTW I don't get algae either :evil:

 

[Stone]

My turn....:rollhappy: No Paphs as I only have young ones and don't feed the same way.

Dend anosmum canes. Yes very cold today!



Maxillaria



Gomesa excavatum




C. walkeriana with 3 flowers on the spike

Dend fairchildiae with 1.5 mt canes (still growing)



Dendrochilum javieri



Dend. sulcatum



Catt trianiae



Catt. jongheana



Nanodes medusae



Dend calamiforme



Laelia anceps. (flower spikes 1.5 mt this year)



Aerides falcatum (4 new growths at the base)



Dend tetragonum



All fed at 100ppm N and 100ppm K at every second or third watering

 

[Stone]

Some more

Aerides houlettiana



Phal schilleriana



Encyclia cordigera



Angraecum leonis



Dend loddigesii



Brassia verrucosa



Brassavola grandiflora



Isabelia violacea



All fed 100ppm N and 100ppm K every second or third watering.

No moss anywhere.

 

[Ozpaph]

Nice plants Mike, but you're getting soft!

 

[Bjorn]

Bjorn,

Your plants look really great. What's in that Norway water? I may have to reconsider my fertilizing regimen and go to .75.

Really nice looking orchids. I'm kind of astounded.

Careful...Guess there is somthing about my water, its from a bog so may contain some humates etc as well as sulphur (you can smell it). Further, I use my own fertiliser with a lot of sulphate and more micros than common. The proportions are different too. I think that this is the reason for the apparent sucess at these low fertiliser levels. Furter, and this is probably something few people do, I have the water in a tank, add a few ppm of silicic acid as this makes the nutrients more available to the plants, heat the water to approx 20°C so that the plants never get cold water, bubble it with ozone, Dunnow if that makes a difference except turning the water odorless(makes sulphate out of the sulfide). Add fertiliser to all water in the hose by use of two Dosatrons (one for Ca, Mg nitrate, another for the rest) and the water has a pH adjusted by citric acid (in the fertiliser mix, acts as chelant for the iron and manganese there as well) to a pH of approximately 5.5-6.
Sounds complicated? right? And is but all is Automatic, so I do not have to thing, only when I test new things - well and constantly inbetweeen

 

[Bjorn]

Bjorn, how often to fertilize at 10 ppm?

Orcoholic, how often are you fertilizing?

As stated above, all water contains fertiliser.

 

[Bjorn]

The paphs in the background of Bjorn first picture of the kovachii illustrates my point. Those plants are suffering. The moss should be removed and and toped with fresh clean media and they will be the better for it.
The plants from Hawaii are all grown outside where there is not only good air movement but wind. This goes a long way in keeping the medium fresh.
I think it is inevitable that you and other moss fans will eventually come to the same conclusion as me.....I hope
BTW I don't get algae either :evil:

Agree, those plants were suffering, those were the runts of a flask of helenae album and a helenae. Those smallish plants are not keen of too much moss. Just for your info, they have been potted up now and look much tidier and for that sake healthier. The pale color is partly due to being album and to having excess light
I do not like to weed moss, but I have to do it with the more diminutive species so that they do not disappear. Moss is a nuisance, but I do not think it does influence the roots much. Fertiliser kills the roots. I am not fond of repotting so I try to avoid it. I have had paphs in the same compost for more than 10 years. Eventually I started fooling around with fertiliser at 100ppm N and that killed my plants. Slowly I have moved to these very low levels, simply because more is not necessary. And it keeps my substrate healthy. I have a few plants in that same pot since 1993. That is quite god I must say. Being a coelogyne flaccida, its not supposed to take repotting very kindly so I leave it where it is and it has never been so good as it is now. But, imagine 22years in the same pot!

 

[Bjorn]

Mike, wonderful plants! really envy you the space! Youre so right, life would have been much easier without moss and ferns, its a constant battle. But as my plants grew well but suffered from deceases (they are much healthier now) and lost their roots when I was giving them 100 ppm N I had to leave that concept. Over some years my plants have become adjusted to this lower Level of nutrients, and seem to like it. Perhaps 10ppm N is suboptimal, that may be so, but time will show.
One thing, I water almost continously, every day or every second day, except during winter.
Btw. how cold is it in your house? You dress as if it is sub-zerooke:

 

[tomkalina]

Impressive growing, Mike.

 

[SlipperKing]

Mike when was the last time you were in Hawaii? Doug and Jay where there last summer and will go back this summer. The businesses mentioned and a few more where all under plastic, not outside as you are thinking. Huge, massive greenhouses and automated.

 

[orcoholic]

Careful...Guess there is somthing about my water, its from a bog so may contain some humates etc ..........

If I'm reading this right, you add fertilizer at the rate of 10ppmN to the bog water? plus you add CA and Mg to that.

I guess I'm curious as to what ppm or Ec your water is when it's applied to the orchids.

Regarding this discussion, I always assumed that the water started as RO or rainwater and then 10ppmN was added to that.

Could be your water, after the additives, is higher than or approaches .8eC, which I think is about 350 - 400tds.

 

[orcoholic]

Stone,

I think you helped make it apparent that getting high is the only way to go - on the fertilizer rates that is.

 

[Stone]

Mike when was the last time you were in Hawaii? Doug and Jay where there last summer and will go back this summer. The businesses mentioned and a few more where all under plastic, not outside as you are thinking. Huge, massive greenhouses and automated.

Ok. Last time I was there was '84 :sob:

 

[Stone]

Stone,

I think you helped make it apparent that getting high is the only way to go - on the fertilizer rates that is.

I still believe we should be discriminating. All the lowland plants and the all the strong growing orchids do very well with that type of rate and it has been proved so many times for so long you would be reinventing the wheel if you found otherwise.
The small botanicals, highland minatures etc seem to get by on half that rate or less. EC around 0.3 is fine.
Paphs - I'm still not sure about but there is probably variation in those too.
BTW, full strength hydroponic feed (MSU) has an EC commonly around 2.0dsm (recommended) so we are still feeding at more or less half rate. (usually even less)

 

[Stone]

Moss is a nuisance, but I do not think it does influence the roots much

.

I have to disagree with that Bjorn. The breakdown of potting material is much faster under moss. The diffusion of air is much slower.

The Japanese who have been growing plants in pots for longer that any of us have a saying. ''good drainage (course materials), fast drying (lots of air at the roots), lots of water, lots of fertilizer = faster plants'' (something like that anyway)

Notice how close hydroponics comes to that?

the ''lots of fertilizer part'' does not mean high amount necessarily. What it actually means is that by creating the optimum root evironment, we have healthier roots which can then take up more nutrients and more water and the plants simply grow faster. Moss inhibits that. So in theory you would need to use less feed if you have moss covering the surface of the container because of the slower plant metabolism. Maybe that is one reason you are seeing improved results when you cut down drastically?

 

[Bjorn]

If I'm reading this right, you add fertilizer at the rate of 10ppmN to the bog water? plus you add CA and Mg to that.

I guess I'm curious as to what ppm or Ec your water is when it's applied to the orchids.

Regarding this discussion, I always assumed that the water started as RO or rainwater and then 10ppmN was added to that.

Could be your water, after the additives, is higher than or approaches .8eC, which I think is about 350 - 400tds.

Probably it is, but the water itself contains approximately 60-80ppm of something, not Nitrate/nitrite, (tested that) according to the conductivity. The conductivity CAN be caused by humates/fulvates in the water, but it definitely contains sulphur. No Ca or Mg or alkalinity. Basically pure water that has been a bit contaminated by the bog. To this (unknown) composition I add 60ppm fertiliser (15%N). With the precipitation we have around here, it is basically rainwater that has been a bit polluted.
The bog itself is an interesting eco-system, being a sphagnum bog. More or less a thick carpet of sphagnum floating on top of an overgrown lake/pond. So the water has been naturally filtered through sphagnum/peat before being used in the greenhouse.

 

[Bjorn]

.

I have to disagree with that Bjorn. The breakdown of potting material is much faster under moss. The diffusion of air is much slower.

The Japanese who have been growing plants in pots for longer that any of us have a saying. ''good drainage (course materials), fast drying (lots of air at the roots), lots of water, lots of fertilizer = faster plants'' (something like that anyway)

Notice how close hydroponics comes to that?

the ''lots of fertilizer part'' does not mean high amount necessarily. What it actually means is that by creating the optimum root evironment, we have healthier roots which can then take up more nutrients and more water and the plants simply grow faster. Moss inhibits that. So in theory you would need to use less feed if you have moss covering the surface of the container because of the slower plant metabolism. Maybe that is one reason you are seeing improved results when you cut down drastically?

Mike, Jim Rentoul had that opinion in his books, and he was very much against moss. Ok, thick carpets of moss is a nuisance - that we can agree upon. The rest, well let me give an example:

Normally, when I buy flasks, I immediately plant them in rows in flats and keep them there for a year or so. During this year the flat gets covered with thick carpets of moss. Here is a Picture taken Jan 14 2013 of such a flat with P vietnamense deflasked in march 2012.

In August 2013 they were potted

and in March 2014 quite a few of them bloomed, here are Three

So, two years from flask to bloom, Including a heavy carpet of moss during their infacy stage in the flat.
this year one of them, you can recognise him in the flat, the big one to the left (the smaller in front are jackiis - one of my failures do not talk so much about those) Picture taken end of April with two flowers on one stalk, one capsule, 3 new leads and the second blooming in 6 months! This plant has attempted to bloom 3 times since deflasking in march 2012, one blastd.

One may argue that I have not used these very low fertiliser levels all the time, that is why the moss is a bit brown in the first picture, BUT it is impossible to say that they have been without moss!
Excessive moss and ferns are another issue, that has to be removed and is a nuisance. But then, I do not have to repot that much
This is of course an extraordinary example, but if moss was that bad, how can these results be obtained? And btw. the oxygen supply tot he roots is predominantly during watering. Heavy rains fill the voids with oxygenated water and when it disappears, fresh air is drawn into the soil/compost. Gaseous diffusion is very unlikely except for the uppermost layer. Perhaps the secret to my sucess lies in my water conditioning? I always bubble air and ozone inte the tank.
And btw. I do not repot frequently, mostly only when the plant size demands or the ferns have got too exessive. substrate breakdown is no reason to repot unless its getting poisonous , e.g. by accumulated salts:evil:

 

[cnycharles]

.
The Japanese who have been growing plants in pots for longer that any of us have a saying. ''good drainage (course materials), fast drying (lots of air at the roots), lots of water, lots of fertilizer = faster plants'' (something like that anyway)

Notice how close hydroponics comes to that?
[\QUOTE]


Actually the concept is used or at least understood in western horticultural production. If you are trying to grow something big and or quickly, you want to get as many 'cycles' of wetting and drying as you can. If you keep the roots 'wet' or moister than is healthy for the medium then they can rot and of course too dry 'burns' (word used for brevity). Most cycles allows the most chance for fertilizer input and plant up and out the door. The Dutch probably have this down really well as many plants grown fast and furious and to auction and not brought back. So, have to balance the media and everything else to allow fastest 'cycles' to allow most 'turns' or successive waves of plants through greenhouse = greatest chance of higher income. Many trade offs to manage as often the best growing media etc isn't the best for having short term plants or shipping them distance to warehouse or store, or keeping then alive once there. Good materials may be heavy and cost too much to ship. Also nitrates are chosen often for small plants on carts to stores because they can help to limit growth as tall plants take too much space on cart to store and hard to target proper sales shipping time if growing too fast and sloppy



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[orcoholic]

Bjorn,

I think you need to be officially disqualified from low ppmer status. No one can duplicate your water, and what works for you isn't available to anyone outside The Valhalla Hood. (That is Norway, right?)

In addition, and probably most important, your orchids look good enough to disprove my point that high fertilizer rates work better than lower rates. How dare you. LOL