Quote: >Many are obsessed with fertilizing their orchids and I see far more killed by >overfertilizing than under , hence "half recommended strength"
I couldn't agree more. Personally, I have almost stopped applying fertiliser altogether. Plants in the wild get remarkably little - rain wash nitrate and sulphur, bird dung, insects that die when nesting in the root ball - and seem none the worse for this. If you fertilise a lot, you get vigorous but soft growth and tend - IMHO, but without the sort of controlled experiment that is needed to test this - reduced flowering. (I am sure that hybrids - which I do not grow - are selected to respond to a high nutrient regime. I am talking about orchid species.) Soft growth tends to be susceptible to disease, notably in Phalaenopsis. High nutrient levels stimulate bacteria and fungi in the root medium, (a) accelerating is degradation and (b) creating a bug-rich soup around the roots. As mentioned earlier, we do know that this leads to microbe invasion of the vascular system and endophytic bacteria build up in the leaf mesophyll. Final point: nitrate fertilisers of course degrade to a variety of gases which percolate around the glasshouse. This in turn leads to slime on the glass, crud on leaves - particularly if you splash fertiliser on them - and, if the pot run-off goes onto the floor, grubby and slippery underbench habitats for snails, woodlice and the like. ______________________________ Oliver Sparrow +44 (0)1628 823187 www.chforum.org _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
