Top Dressing Moss with Calcium Carbonate

[DavidCampen]

You sound like a movie critic.

Come back and tell me about it when you have a specimen size Paph emersonii in bloom using your logic.

So, some anecdotal reports are all the evidence you have to support your potassium toxicity thesis. That is fine, just don't pretend that you have presented any scientific evidence.

I see your 2012 AM/AOS for Paph emersonii, it must be a very nice plant. I also see a couple dozen other awards for Paph emersonii going back to 1987 and I doubt that many if any of these plants were fertilized according to your potassium toxicity thesis. I have also seen a number of Paphs that were decades old and I am pretty certain that they also aren't being grown according to your potassium toxicity thesis.

 

[gonewild]

Maybe I better slip them a potassium mickey before they realize they are orchid zombies and come out of the GH to suck the potassium out of my brain. :evil:

Isn't that why they call it Salt Peter?

 

[gonewild]

So you really are defending your freshwater mussel to orchid analogy as a principal justification for your potassium toxicity thesis. That is absurd. And then you add "Or were coal miners out of their mind for trusting a pet bird with their lives". More irrelevance.

Have you ever heard of an Indicator Species?

 

[gonewild]

I see your 2012 AM/AOS for Paph emersonii, it must be a very nice plant. I also see a couple dozen other awards for Paph emersonii going back to 1987 and I doubt that many if any of these plants were fertilized according to your potassium toxicity thesis.

Perhaps with lower Potassium levels there would have been hundreds rather than dozens.

 

[Stone]

There's a bunch of angry out of work machinists that have been replaced by computer controlled, laser guided....robots that those idiot, college taught, no-it-all's came up with. No accounting for individual stupidity, but some of those scientific malcontents periodically come up with something that actually produces better results than the status quot.

Technology is moving at breakneck speed. I just heard that robots are being developed to tend row crops. Then we won't even need horticulturalists.:sob:

Technology is f**king up our planet. You need wisdom to go along with it and I don't see wisdom moving at breakneck speed. The Australian aboriginies thrived for more than 40,000 years without tech. Where will we be in 40,000 years with it? I will hazard a guess that we could be living in some sort of tech hell the way things are headed..........Living for the moment and our ''leaders'' only interested in the next 4 years. Is life really better now than it was 50 years ago? we have possible global warming (from tech) seas running out of fish (from tech) companies with patents on food seed (from tech) but of course we have flat screens and faster cars:clap: )Are we growing orchids much better than 50 years ago? I'm not sure? But I'm getting way off subject

 

[Stone]

Breakthroughs are not made by people who are confined to tribal groupthink, but rather knowledgeable people from outside the tribe who don't harbor any prejudices.

Give me an example of a ''breakthrough'' that has helped mankind or nature lately. People are still dieing of cancer and heart disease as fast as ever before. The so called medical breakthroughs have not improved the general health of people one bit! All it has managed to do is keep us alive a little longer with preservatives. (but at least there's lots more being born to take their place) And the health of this planet is still in freefall. So whats ''the big breakthrough'' of our time? We still can't convice people to stop beliveing in a magic spirits. Humans are apes with computers

 

[Rick]

Are we growing orchids much better than 50 years ago? I'm not sure? But I'm getting way off subject

I agree with you Mike. But 50 years ago is when agri scientists came up with high potassium chemical feed for crops. The orchid growers adopted this because it was "scientific". If you want to go old school you need to go back to blood meal/bonemeal and leaf mold. These don't offer the level of K that comes from chemical feed, but they do work.

 

[gonewild]

Are we growing orchids much better than 50 years ago? I'm not sure?

Yes we are growing orchids better now than 50 years ago.
But so what? 50 years ago orchids were just as beautiful and enjoyable.

 

[SlipperKing]

So, some anecdotal reports are all the evidence you have to support your potassium toxicity thesis. That is fine, just don't pretend that you have presented any scientific evidence.

I see your 2012 AM/AOS for Paph emersonii, it must be a very nice plant. I also see a couple dozen other awards for Paph emersonii going back to 1987 and I doubt that many if any of these plants were fertilized according to your potassium toxicity thesis. I have also seen a number of Paphs that were decades old and I am pretty certain that they also aren't being grown according to your potassium toxicity thesis.

Those are very fine examples of awarded emersonii you pulled out of the database but my question to you David is; Show me proof where one if any are still alive to be seen again?
This forum alone is riddle with folks commenting on emersonii, easy to bloom BUT hard to keep alive. I for one, have a plant doing well at the moment. I'm not ready to say its because of K lite but I can say, "It's not K heavy" I must also add, this is the first emersonii that is getting bigger instead of shrinking.

I've seen enough to know there is something going in the right direction for my house. This may not be hardcore science as you would like to see but there is enough for myself.
You must be a scientist of sorts. I challenge you to take the preliminary information and prove Rick wrong. I would enjoy reading it in a future Orchids publication.

 

[Ozpaph]

Give me an example of a ''breakthrough'' that has helped mankind or nature lately. People are still dieing of cancer and heart disease as fast as ever before.

Stone, that's simply not true. I know you're trying to use an analogy but people are certainly NOT dying from cardiac disease like they were. All as a result of smoking cessation rates in Australia(? K+ analogy), statins, aspirin and revascularisation - all medical technologies. Provable and indisputable. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/0/692c03405807cf0bca25773700169c87?opendocument

 

[DavidCampen]

Those are very fine examples of awarded emersonii you pulled out of the database but my question to you David is; Show me proof where one if any are still alive to be seen again?

I was just responding to Rick's assertion that he had been able to bloom emersonii only because of "K-Lite" by giving examples going back to 1987 of other emersonii that had been awarded. I couldn't speak to whether any of those are still alive or not.

This forum alone is riddle with folks commenting on emersonii, easy to bloom BUT hard to keep alive. I for one, have a plant doing well at the moment. I'm not ready to say its because of K lite but I can say, "It's not K heavy" I must also add, this is the first emersonii that is getting bigger instead of shrinking.

So here we have anecdotal evidence, with one very hard to grow species, that there is perhaps some indication that "K-Lite" may be beneficial.
This is hardly scientific evidence that "K-Lite" is actually beneficial for emersonii much less for orchids in general.

I've seen enough to know there is something going in the right direction for my house. This may not be hardcore science as you would like to see but there is enough for myself.

I am only asking to see the scientific evidence because Rick, Ray and a few others here claim that it exists.

You must be a scientist of sorts. I challenge you to take the preliminary information and prove Rick wrong. I would enjoy reading it in a future Orchids publication.

I have never claimed to be able to "prove Rick wrong". I do claim that the AOS article does not offer scientific evidence to support Rick's potassium toxicity thesis; the best evidence proferred there is the (IMO, rather tenuous) analogy from fresh water clams to orchids.

 

[Rick]

So, some anecdotal reports are all the evidence you have to support your potassium toxicity thesis. That is fine, just don't pretend that you have presented any scientific evidence.

So I guess you don't consider anything as science if it doesn't included a double blind controlled multi-replicate bench study. Never claimed to have done that. But apparently you wouldn't consider anything in the ecological sciences as "science" either. And I guess you also don't consider the topic of ecological relevance as a matter of science either.

So on the flip side none of us have been presented with any scientific evidence that high K fert mixes produces orchids with comparable physiologies to wild orchids. These same orchids have been surviving quite well for millions of years without human intervention, and based on "field researchers" are actually doing better in the wild than they are in captivity.

So why should we blindly accept the handful of "scientific" orchid GH/hybrid research (most of it would barely meet your standards of anecdotal either) pointing out "optimal" nutrition requirements when the standards do not even meet those of wild orchids?

Or do you have "scientific evidence" that orchids actually do better in captivity than in the jungle?

 

[Rick]

I was just responding to Rick's assertion that he had been able to bloom emersonii only because of "K-Lite" by giving examples going back to 1987 of other emersonii that had been awarded. I couldn't speak to whether any of those are still alive or not.

No, I challenged you to present your own defense/evidence of a high K feeding regime by you growing a notoriously difficult species to specimen size.

There are several quality awards to emersonii but having an emersonii bloom get a quality award is merely a documentation of survival. Given the relatively low number of quality awards to emersonii compared to easier species like wardii, this could indicate a small feat itself. But the real clincher is a cultural award (which I have not garnered myself, but my plant is well on its way), and how many growers have managed CCE/CCM's for emersonii? I challenge you with your formulation and orchid expertise to grow a specimen emersonii to CCE standards. I'm not interested in old quality awards (especially if they are all dead anyway).

And at what point does "anecdotal" become "scientific evidence". Put a number on it please.

 

[DavidCampen]

So I guess you don't consider anything as science if it doesn't included a double blind controlled multi-replicate bench study. Never claimed to have done that. But apparently you wouldn't consider anything in the ecological sciences as "science" either. And I guess you also don't consider the topic of ecological relevance as a matter of science either.

What I have said is that there is no evidence presented in your AOS article.

 

[DavidCampen]

And at what point does "anecdotal" become "scientific evidence". Put a number on it please.

So all you have is your fresh water mussel to orchid analogy and some anecdotal reports.

 

[Stone]

Stone, that's simply not true. I know you're trying to use an analogy but people are certainly NOT dying from cardiac disease like they were. All as a result of smoking cessation rates in Australia(? K+ analogy), statins, aspirin and revascularisation - all medical technologies. Provable and indisputable. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/0/692c03405807cf0bca25773700169c87?opendocument

Ok I should have said ''contracting'' or ''aquiring'' ( not dying of) Like I said, they are keeping us alive longer with preservatives like aspirin, statins or radiation etc.

 

[Stone]

The point about k-lite is that its pretty much proved that at least in organic based media, the orchids seem able to gather enough K to carry out their fuctions-and this is in line with the field data which shows a very low avaiability of K yet leaf analysis shows a roughly 1:1 K/N ratio or slightly higher even though N availability is much higher.
What also seems to be the case (to me) is that higher application of K does not show reduced growth, plant stress, ''burn out'' shorter life or Mg and Ca deficiencies. I actually like the K-lite theory because it is based on natural systems. I especially like the low P as high P concetrations have certainly shown to reduce growth, reduce flowering, reduce root hair develodment, lead to mycorrhiza death etc. In the end it may not make the slighest bit of difference to the plant whether it gets k-lite (K/N 0.1-litter levels) or k-medium (K/N 1-leaf levels) But I continue to watch this space!
Also K or P concentrations should always be considered along with their ratio to N not in isolation

 

[Stone]

Or do you have "scientific evidence" that orchids actually do better in captivity than in the jungle?[/

I pretty sure you could say that at least some do.

 

[Ozpaph]

Ok I should have said ''contracting'' or ''aquiring'' ( not dying of) Like I said, they are keeping us alive longer with preservatives like aspirin, statins or radiation etc.

Hey, what's wrong with preservatives - just ask Joan Rivers.............:rollhappy::rollhappy::rollhappy: