Paph Watering Philosophy

[masaccio]

I feel very insecure about when to water paphs. I understand that they don't want to dry out, but I'm a little phobic about overwatering. I tend to get paphs towards the drier side before I water. Maybe slight dampness, but no detectable wetness on a skewer. Is that right? Thanks!

 

[Ray]

Mine are in semi-hydroponics, so are constantly moist but airy.

Think more about the air supply being constantly adequate, and the watering becomes far easier.

 

[masaccio]

Good. Thanks Ray.

 

[emydura]

I know how you feel. It is so confusing for the beginner to work out how much to water their Paphs. There is so much conflicting information. Much of the emphasis is not to over-water. If in doubt, don't water is often advised. I was petrified to turn the tap on. The end result was I grossly underwatered my plants for more than a decade. Paphs love water. The more the better. Just as long as you don't rot the roots. It is not the water that rots the roots though, it is the lack of oxygen. So, it is just a matter of using the right size potting mix to ensure that air still gets into the mix even when kept wet and repotting before the mix breaks down. A lot of us are now using baskets instead of pots. This enables you to water more but still allow lots of oxygen to penetrate the roots.

I have found that keeping your plants wetter produces larger stronger growths as well as creating multiple growths.

 

[Ray]

When I was first starting orchid-growing, a Paph was my first purchase. I remember reading that they are often found with their roots spread out in the layer of crumbling leaf litter on forest floors, so went to a park in Atlanta to see what that looked like.

Good concept, but bad example it turns out, as dense, tropical rainforests tend to have much thicker, coarser layers of accumulated crud, which stays very airy.

 

[Linus_Cello]

If you are “overwatering” it helps to repot your plants often

 

[Ozpaph]

where are you and what are your growing conditions? That might help with advice

 

[masaccio]

where are you and what are your growing conditions? That might help with advice

Thanks, but I just wanted general watering advice, not culture-specific.

 

[masaccio]

I know how you feel. It is so confusing for the beginner to work out how much to water their Paphs. There is so much conflicting information. Much of the emphasis is not to over-water. If in doubt, don't water is often advised. I was petrified to turn the tap on. The end result was I grossly underwatered my plants for more than a decade. Paphs love water. The more the better. Just as long as you don't rot the roots. It is not the water that rots the roots though, it is the lack of oxygen. So, it is just a matter of using the right size potting mix to ensure that air still gets into the mix even when kept wet and repotting before the mix breaks down. A lot of us are now using baskets instead of pots. This enables you to water more but still allow lots of oxygen to penetrate the roots. I have found that keeping your plants wetter produces larger stronger growths as well as creating multiple growths.

Thanks for the sympathetic and helpful response! I have also tended to under-water and they don't like it!! This post contained is exactly the sort of info I was looking for. I noticed at a recent show that a couple of paphs (a venustum and a bulldog) were both potted in very chunky mediums. This makes sense, sort've emulating their anchoring in nature. I'm also starting to weigh paphs before and after watering, especially one that recently arrived in a seedling mix (emersonii/malipoense cross). Larger plant, maybe needs more anchoring? Anyway, thanks again.

 

[masaccio]

When I was first starting orchid-growing, a Paph was my first purchase. I remember reading that they are often found with their roots spread out in the layer of crumbling leaf litter on forest floors, so went to a park in Atlanta to see what that looked like. Good concept, but bad example it turns out, as dense, tropical rainforests tend to have much thicker, coarser layers of accumulated crud, which stays very airy.

Yes! Very good example. My first orchid also was a paph. A complex hybrid. It was potted in a Styrofoam coffee cup (Tallahasssee) in sphagnum. I've been attached to sphagnum for paphs ever since, it did quite well. I don't really understand why people say that sphagnum is so difficult to water. You can tell where it is at every stage of drying out by just picking it up. Thanks, Ray! I find bark far more mystifying in this regard.

 

[BrucherT]

where are you and what are your growing conditions? That might help with advice

I’m an indoor grower, Chicago apartment: Paphiopedilum purpuratum, hangianum, delenatii, charlesworthii, spicerianum, phillipinense, rothschildianum, venustem, few hybrids. I grow in plastic pots, repot every other year into mostly seedling orchid mix, pumice and a little crushed oyster shell. I water about every 5 days, using reverse osmosis. I feed every other watering using Jacks’s liquid, but sometimes I use seaweed fertilizers and occasionally a put a couple drops of Cal-Mag in the gallon. I grow in a southeast window, which has a bit of natural shading, and most of the slippers are inside a tall glass terrarium with a roof that I keep open but which does enable me to keep ambient humidity at 60-80 during part of the day. Everything blooms.

 

[masaccio]

I’m an indoor grower, Chicago apartment: Paphiopedilum purpuratum, hangianum, delenatii, charlesworthii, spicerianum, phillipinense, rothschildianum, venustem, few hybrids. I grow in plastic pots, repot every other year into mostly seedling orchid mix, pumice and a little crushed oyster shell. I water about every 5 days, using reverse osmosis. I feed every other watering using Jacks’s liquid, but sometimes I use seaweed fertilizers and occasionally a put a couple drops of Cal-Mag in the gallon. I grow in a southeast window, which has a bit of natural shading, and most of the slippers are inside a tall glass terrarium with a roof that I keep open but which does enable me to keep ambient humidity at 60-80 during part of the day. Everything blooms.

Sounds great.

 

[NYEric]

I was going to say, only watering every 5 days!? I think BrucherT's plants are surviving because they're in a terrarium.

 

[southernbelle]

I was going to say, only watering every 5 days!? I think BrucherT's plants are surviving because they're in a terrarium.

Just spoke to two professional Paph hybridizes at a show and the consensus was, pretty much, match the mix size to the size of the pot and water every 7 days. Maybe 9 in winter, maybe 5 in summer. For some reason, growing under LEDs in an indoor plant room with 50-55% humidity in Orchiatta (size scaled to size of pot), 10% charcoal, 10 growstone, 10 clipped long strand moss, my watering is more complicated than that depending on pot size. I’ve traditionally overwatered. Have just started using O2 Grow which adds nano dissolved oxygen to water. Hopefully that will help. Check it out www.o2grow.com

 

[Ray]

Just spoke to two professional Paph hybridizes at a show and the consensus was, pretty much, match the mix size to the size of the pot and water every 7 days. Maybe 9 in winter, maybe 5 in summer.

What "THEY" do has absolutely no bearing on what WE should do! Their overall growing conditions are probably nothing like yours, and that and the particular potting media and pots chosen determine "what's right" for the plants.

Have just started using O2 Grow which adds nano dissolved oxygen to water. Hopefully that will help. Check it out www.o2grow.com

If we are willing to accept their technology, we have to understand that the "super-oxygenated" water is unstable, and it will naturally go to back to whatever the O2 saturation equilibrium happens to be with air at a given temperature. That water, when poured into soil, may retain the oxygen a relatively long time, as the air exchange rate is so low, and in hydroponic systems (for which the technology was invented), it tends to be more enclosed and/or the system operated continually. For oxygenating water that is poured over an orchid potting medium, the equilibration is probably a lot faster, so may be of minimal benefit.

 

[BrucherT]

I was going to say, only watering every 5 days!? I think BrucherT's plants are surviving because they're in a terrarium.

Hey NYEric, they’re not all in the terrarium. I check the hygrometer, I keep water in the tray, I mist with RO every morning. Sometimes I go as long as ten days without watering, in the dead of winter when it’s overcast and cold, and I do a dry period in the fall to help set some buds. Actually think I could stand to go colder/drier on some of these from Thanksgiving through New Year but there are limits to what I can easily accomplish in the house.

 

[xiphius]

*blink*

Have just started using O2 Grow which adds nano dissolved oxygen to water.

What is this nonsense? It sounds like pseudoscience at best - outright lies at worst. I hadn't heard of this before, but it basically sounds like an airstone-type setup with much smaller bubbles (from the product page, it just looks like an electrolysis system?). Granted, lots of smaller bubbles have a larger surface area than fewer, larger, bubbles and will dissolve gas into liquid more efficiently (and electrolysis will contain a higher percentage of oxygen). However, unless the bubbler was kept on continuously, I can't really see this doing much. Even if the bubbler is kept on continuously, I have a hard time believing that this would yield better results (in terms of plant health/growth) than a good-quality micro-airstone (which can be had for just a few bucks). As Ray mentioned, if you just treat the water before pouring it over a plant, all of the extra oxygen will dissipate relatively quickly. I would think much too quickly to be of any real benefit to the plant. To that end, it would probably be easier (and much cheaper) to dump dilute hydrogen peroxide on your plants (which will also generate oxygen as it breaks down). This would also be more protective against root rot since it is an active anti-bacterial/fungal agent.

 

[xiphius]

First, I find it very suspicious that their website contains a "research" section that name-drops some horticultural professors, but contains no links to any actual publications (peer-reviewed or otherwise). Also, the claims are very "hand-wavey" with very little numerical data (or sound theory) to support them. I also find it suspicious that, on reading more, I can find absolutely no comparisons between O2 Grow and regular airstones. The "research" linked on their website that I can see only shows comparisons for oxygenated versus non-treated water. The difference doesn't even look to be that huge, only reinforcing my thoughts that a regular micro-airstone would provide exactly the same benefits. Any researcher worth their salt would have included regular AND micro-airstones in these studies as a basis for comparison. The fact that they did not tells me that they are either not very good scientists, or they are selectively omitting parts of their research which they don't like.

Their claim that the system can "provide 50% more dissolved oxygen than a bubbler" is meaningless since they don't tell us how they arrived at that number (theoretical calculations? empirical test?). There is also no evidence presented that shows that adding "more" is necessary or even better. There is always going to be a limit as to how much and how fast the plant can use oxygen, adding anything beyond that is just a waste. In a similar vein, I can always add more fertilizer, but if the plant is already uptaking nutrients at max efficiency, then I may as well just be flushing that down the drain.

 

[Ray]

One of my favorite parts was the fact that the hydrogen bubbles to the top and goes away but the oxygen stays in the water.

 

[Linus_Cello]

One of my favorite parts was the fact that the hydrogen bubbles to the top and goes away but the oxygen stays in the water.

Maybe it's heavy oxygen for cold fusion?