Still a bit confused about Grow & Bloom Fertilisers with Phrags.

[garysan]

Sorry as I'm sure this has been covered countless times...

From an indoor growers' perspective, my temps vary little over the course of the year with 24-27 C during the day dropping to 17-19 C during the night (I do change 'day length' however with around 15-16 hrs in summer down to 10 in Dec-Jan).

My question is when should I be using a Bloom fert instead of Grow and vice a versa? Or should I only be using Bloom when plants come into spike? I'm confused...

Just in case it's worth noting: I've started adding CalMag regularly and Epsom salts about once a month as the leaves on my phrags were getting a little bit yellowish but newer leaves have greened up nicely since the additions.

 

[NYEric]

Good question, I don't know.

 

[blondie]

I know where your coming from when I first started gorwing orchids I was the same.

In all honestly it really dose not matter, you can use it the growth one week the the flower one next week. When i was at the working for the RHS we would feed with growth from April to Sept then change to flower feed from Oct to March. Mainly becuase it's mixed collection.

Personally for me i don't bother with the two types these days so I use a equal fert all year haven't really notice much change in flowering.

 

[PaphMadMan]

"Bloom" fertilizers are 99% marketing hype when it comes to growing orchids, and most people use them exactly the wrong way besides. Using them when you see a spike is too late, almost exactly out of cycle. Some even give those wrong instructions just because it is what people expect. They have legitimate use for production of greenhouse crops, and someone decided to make more money by marketing to home growers even though it doesn't do much if any good.

For mature orchid plants the only thing that makes any sense at all is to use "Bloom" fertilizer most of the time, with a few applications of "Grow" instead just before and at the start of vegetative growth. That might actually be of benefit with Phrags. For seedlings use "Grow" all the time. Better yet, choose one good fertilizer formula and use it consistently and lightly. Fertilizer will never be the limiting factor in your success with orchids of any kind if you do that.

 

[Ray]

Adding to PMM's astute comments, plants just don't react rapidly to changes in nutrition, unless of course, you're overdosing them.

If you stopped feeding them altogether, it would be a matter of months and months before you'd see any change.

 

[garysan]

Adding to PMM's astute comments, plants just don't react rapidly to changes in nutrition, unless of course, you're overdosing them.

If you stopped feeding them altogether, it would be a matter of months and months before you'd see any change.

It was over the course of many months. They generally seemed ok but started to yellow more leaves than you would expect them to normally - just before and during flowering. After I upped the dosage of fert, plants that came into flower after the change were much less or not affected in the same way.

See my previous thread for fuller details: http://www.slippertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43822

 

[Brabantia]

The three last flowering I show you on this forum where obtained with a fertilyser having a 3_1_2 ratio and it was used ALL the year !

Envoyé de mon Nexus 9 en utilisant Tapatalk

 

[Stone]

No need for ''bloom booster'' ferts. Firstly, they do not boost blooms. Flowers typically have less P in them than leaves. If your old leaves are going yellow (then into pale brown) before their time, you need more N (or more everything along with more N if you know what I mean).