# Top Dressing Moss with Calcium Carbonate



## Rick (Apr 4, 2013)

Ok here's some results from a trial I did with adding different amounts of CaribSea Cichlid Sand (aragonite sand, aragonite is almost pure calcium carbonate) to a fixed amount of NZ sphagnum moss in 100ml of RO water.

The amount of moss was the hardest to control. I compressed as much dry moss as I could pack into a 50mL measuring scoop, but after going into water and expanding, I could see that the 0.4gr exposure had more moss than the other exposures.

I was surprised that even the lowest dose of sand (only 0.2 grams) was more than enough to buffer the moss pH into optimal fertilizer uptake range, and actually put the alkalinity and conductivity (TDS) beyond what I would want to keep my plants in long term.


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## cnycharles (Apr 4, 2013)

that might explain why some of my plants that I had made some media for a year ago (small/medium nz treated bark, sponge rock, charcoal and some other mixes with some aragonite sand) died. some was expected because they dried out too much, but I noticed that some big phals that were 'tall' with lots of stem roots, died off in the media and where the roots were growing through air down into the media. above the pot things looked 'okay'

I had lots of styrofoam peanuts around the outside of the media/plant in the big pots, so it's unlikely that everything got too wet down inside, especially since I often wasn't watering as much as needed for them. probably the roots burned because I put a fair amount of aragonite sand in the media and sometimes sprinkled it in; mix big wet/dry with too much ec....

my big, multi-growth delenatii that had been growing very well in a chc based media declined drastically in the high nz bark/aragonite based media (dele liking acidic and media being high ec and pH)


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## gonewild (Apr 4, 2013)

cnycharles said:


> I had lots of styrofoam peanuts around the outside of the media/



Styrofoam may be toxic because of residual manufacturing chemicals.


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## gonewild (Apr 4, 2013)

Rick, in your test pots how did you get samples? Is there free water?
Was the sand mixed in or top dressed?

I wonder how the would relate if the moss was alive and growing?


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## Rick (Apr 4, 2013)

gonewild said:


> Rick, in your test pots how did you get samples? Is there free water?
> Was the sand mixed in or top dressed?
> 
> I wonder how the would relate if the moss was alive and growing?



Not pots, completely submerged/soaking in water. Actually about 1 inch of free water on top of the moss. (except for the 0.4 gr exposure that swelled almost to the water surface).

Not sure about the live moss thing, but that's really a whole separate question. Really just trying to look at typical potting mix ingredients and supplements.

We "accuse" sphagnum, and sometimes bark of being "strongly" acidic, and requireing buffering ammendments. I've always just done this by eyeball, and watching the plants. But if you just watch the plants, it may be too late by the time you think you have trouble.

Given how little aragonite it took to boost the pH, conductivity, and alkalinity, I now figure I was probably just getting enough alkalinity out of my diluted well water to keep the pH/alkalinity fine without any ammendment at all. But with ammendment, I have to water heavy with very low TDS water to flush out all the excess bicarbonate coming off the ammendment!!


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## Ozpaph (Apr 4, 2013)

Thank-you. Very interesting. Will need to think about them for a while.


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## Stone (Apr 4, 2013)

Shows that most people who think that many paphs need limestone to grow well probably dump huge amounts on their plants compared to what is actually needed to stabilize pH and provide some Ca. What is the mesh size of the sand? That's another very important consideration. The same amount (in weight) of a fine dust would give crazy results!


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## Stone (Apr 4, 2013)

gonewild said:


> > I wonder how the would relate if the moss was alive and growing?
> 
> 
> 
> Well you would kill the moss. I've noticed that live sphagnum turns very dark green and finally dies with very low additions of carbonate (and probably anything else leading to high TDS)


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## ALToronto (Apr 4, 2013)

I can see how a very small amount of CaCO3 can raise the pH of pure water by 2 full points (100 times). But this relationship is not linear, and no matter how much aragonite sand is added to sphagnum, the pH will probably max out within a few decimal points of 8.

What does all of this mean for paphs that normally grow on limestone? They're effectively growing on CaO and CaCO3 with a bit of moss whose acidity is probably isn't doing anything to lower the pH and alkalinity. I get the argument that very little aragonite is necessary to raise pH to a reasonable level, but I don't see anything that indicates that an excessive amount of aragonite will do any harm, as long as it's used for _limestone_ lithophytes (i.e. not delenatii)


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## Rick (Apr 4, 2013)

Stone said:


> What is the mesh size of the sand? That's another very important consideration. The same amount (in weight) of a fine dust would give crazy results!



Not dust, coarser than beach/play sand. Maybe 1/2mm grain size.

Yes, the higher the surface area to volume ratio the faster it dissolves, But this material is made for use in aquariums, so it doesn't go away very fast. I have some baskets that I added this stuff too over a year ago, and I still see it in the matrix.


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## Rick (Apr 5, 2013)

ALToronto said:


> What does all of this mean for paphs that normally grow on limestone? They're effectively growing on CaO and CaCO3 with a bit of moss whose acidity is probably isn't doing anything to lower the pH and alkalinity. I get the argument that very little aragonite is necessary to raise pH to a reasonable level, but I don't see anything that indicates that an excessive amount of aragonite will do any harm, as long as it's used for _limestone_ lithophytes (i.e. not delenatii)



Actually if I were to use a coarse (like 3cm diameter) hard limestone gravel, or big solid boulder, it would not release near this amount of alkalinity this fast. I live in a karst limestone area, and the spring waters/creeks/streams in my area do not demonstrate TDS/alkalinity levels to this extent. I doubt that the limestone cliff dwellers in rainforest conditions (where it rains a lot more than it does in Tennessee) see any higher TDS/alkalinity levels. Deep wells are a whole different matter in karst. Folks do grow the calcarious paphs with tons of amendment, but run the racers edge on TDS accumulation, nitrogen management issues, and watering rates to ensure a low TDS buildup.

You've also identified another issue in that pH control is required for all potted plants, and lime addition to potting mixes has never been isolated to cliff dwellers. So how much lime are you going to add to the potting mix for your delenatii and callosum, or do you want them to go to 4.0?


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## Rick (Apr 5, 2013)

Shoot just noticed a missing data point.

The alkalinity in the 0.2 gram exposure was 214 mg/L

So no aragonite = 10.2
0.2 gr aragonite = 214.0
1.0 gr aragonite = 336 mg/L

Also note the final pH in the 0.2 and 1.0 gram systems are very close (6.7 vs 6.8) but conductivity and alkalinity are about 150% greater at 1gr than for 0.2gr

Yes no matter how much sand you add, the pH will not go much greater than 8.0 su, but you will be burning roots from TDS, and the plant will not be able to utilize nitrate as a nitrogen source.

Also for reference, I took the 50ml of compressed moss out of the 100ml bottle it was in, and uncompressed. It filled a standard 2" (deep style) seedling pot to what I consider a normal density for potting up plants. So the useable amount of aragonite sand to use in a 2" pot of moss would be about 1/20th of a tsp of sand.


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## abax (Apr 5, 2013)

Please translate this information to a non-chemist. I occasionally use sharp
builder's sand in baskets and now I'm a tad confused.


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## Rick (Apr 5, 2013)

abax said:


> Please translate this information to a non-chemist. I occasionally use sharp
> builder's sand in baskets and now I'm a tad confused.



The Cichlid Sand is a pH buffering sand made for use in African Cichlid and Salt water aquariums. Aragonite is one of the two pure forms of calcium carbonate. The other is calcite. Same basic chemical but different crystal forms.

But the Cichlid Sand is equivalent (kinda/sorta) to the oyster shell or dolomite/lime that everyone likes to use for pH support (or "supplying calcium") in orchid media that is based on acidic bark or sphagnum moss. Your builders sand is generally some type of fairly inert silica sand. Once its well rinsed, it doesn't really do anything chemistry wise, but helps drainage and water flow in the pot.


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## Ozpaph (Apr 5, 2013)

OK had some time to think.

Rick, great experiment. I think the data applies to a static system. Could you consider the point that the initial high tds and pH changes might occur because there is a lot of freely soluble salt/buffer in the 'sand'?
What happens if you change the water and keep the same sphagnum and remaining 'sand' and add more water? I suspect the tds and buffering capacity fall off and reach a much lower steady state.
From the plant growing perspective I would expect early changes to the run through water 'content' but as one continues to water the plant much of the initial effect fades but there would be a persistent low level buffering effect on pH and calcium supply in the root zone. So in my mind I'm aiming for a 'low and slow' dissolution and influence from the 'sand' over the life cycle of my potting mix.
The question I ask is what is the best dosing period of adding the 'sand' to maintain an appropriate pH and supply supplemental calcium in the root zone.

Thanks for your thoughts.


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## Stone (Apr 5, 2013)

ALToronto said:


> > I don't see anything that indicates that an excessive amount of aragonite will do any harm, as long as it's used for _limestone_ lithophytes (i.e. not delenatii)[/
> 
> 
> I would go as far as to say that no paphs need to be treated any differently with regard to pH or Ca need. As far as harm, you can have Fe becomming less available over pH 6.5. That usually the first thing to go wrong.


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## Stone (Apr 5, 2013)

Ozpaph said:


> > The question I ask is what is the best dosing period of adding the 'sand' to maintain an appropriate pH and supply supplemental calcium in the root zone.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Ozpaph (Apr 5, 2013)

Stone said:


> Ozpaph said:
> 
> 
> > The only way is to know your p/mix pH and the only way know that is to check and make the adjustments.
> ...


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## ALToronto (Apr 5, 2013)

Rick said:


> So how much lime are you going to add to the potting mix for your delenatii and callosum, or do you want them to go to 4.0?



My little delenatii seedling is still in the grower's 2" pot with bark chips; I bought it a month ago and haven't done anything with it yet. I think I will put it in lava rock or LECA (but not s/h; I don't have much success with that), just so that the medium pH doesn't degrade.

My limestone-dwelling paphs will be going on a special mount. I just got a big bag of hemp fibres, and I will be making a very lightweight and porous 'wall' with hemp fibres held together with a bit of my low-pH concrete. More fun experiments ahead.


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## Rick (Apr 5, 2013)

Ozpaph said:


> OK had some time to think.
> 
> Rick, great experiment. I think the data applies to a static system. Could you consider the point that the initial high tds and pH changes might occur because there is a lot of freely soluble salt/buffer in the 'sand'?
> What happens if you change the water and keep the same sphagnum and remaining 'sand' and add more water? I suspect the tds and buffering capacity fall off and reach a much lower steady state.



Yes this is a static system and you are bringing up the right questions. If you look at the higher sand dose rates, you can see that 5X the sand does not add 5 times the TDS and alkalinity. So that doesn't indicate a quick release of readily soluble salt, but dependent on what the acid from the moss is able to dissolve from the pool of sand. If this was something soluble like calcium or sodium chloride you would get a linear increase in conductivity with increasing dose. But seeing that all parameters level off its apparent that the acids from moss also leach out to some equilibrium of buffer too.

But changing the water will knock the TDS/alkalinity back down. In your pots, there is always some water held up in the moss, to release acid, which in contact with sand will release Ca and bicarbonte. Knowing that balance between water exchange/flush, and maintenance of good pH TDS is the tricky part for sure. At what point in your pot is the condition closer to static or dynamic? Mounted plants with no media is totally dynamic. The more water retentive the potting material, the more acidic.......all gets you closer to this all out static test. Monitoring TDS/conductivty is probably the fastest/easiest way to watch this in the GH. Spot checks with pH testing would be awesome too.

All these numbers would end up being site specific if you maybe use Chilean moss with oyster shell or dolomitic lime. But the aragonite is a fairly uniform material, and now we have some numbers to show how chemically active it is (rather than just speculating).

What I plan to do on the next trial, is to try different dilutions of my well water (maybe with a daily water exchange) to determine a minimal alkalinity input to offset moss acidiity without a pot ammendment.


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## gonewild (Apr 5, 2013)

Can you drain off the water and perhaps squeeze a little out of the moss (not all) and then rehydrate with 100ml water? This would give an indication of the repetitiveness of the results.


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## Rick (Apr 5, 2013)

gonewild said:


> Can you drain off the water and perhaps squeeze a little out of the moss (not all) and then rehydrate with 100ml water? This would give an indication of the repetitiveness of the results.



Maybe in a couple of weeks. I'm out of town next week, and need to actually get some paid work done before hobby time in the lab.

But I would expect similar rates of parameter change until the sand is all gone or the acid content of the moss is exhausted.


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## Ozpaph (Apr 5, 2013)

Thanks Rick. 
I dont use moss but do add Argonite to the bark/charcoal/perlite/CHC mix.

I'm going to do some pH and tds testing this weekend.


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## gonewild (Apr 5, 2013)

Rick said:


> Maybe in a couple of weeks. I'm out of town next week, and need to actually get some paid work done before hobby time in the lab.
> 
> But I would expect similar rates of parameter change until the sand is all gone or the acid content of the moss is exhausted.



It would be a good idea to complement your tests. If the results are nrar rhe same them you can expect a lot of reaction every time you water. If the results are far less then the sand won't have a great effect to buffer the moss. But perhaps still enough?

Also would be good to see what happens if you leave out the moss and just pu sand and water together.


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## Stone (Apr 5, 2013)

Ozpaph said:


> Stone said:
> 
> 
> > that sounds scientific
> ...


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## abax (Apr 6, 2013)

Amen, brother Stone, amen!


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## Ozpaph (Apr 6, 2013)

same here!


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## Ray (Apr 6, 2013)

Stone said:


> If only lots of science equalled lots of healthy orchids


Isn't that what we're working toward?

I know that as I have eschewed the "tribal knowledge" in favor of understanding the science that underlies it, I have become a better grower.


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## Stone (Apr 6, 2013)

Ray said:


> Isn't that what we're working toward?
> 
> I know that as I have eschewed the "tribal knowledge" in favor of understanding the science that underlies it, I have become a better grower.



In theory, lots of studying and reading and researching _should_ lead to better growing techiniques and it does to a small extent however I believe that even with all the study into nutrients etc which I've undertaken recently and at hort school years ago, I still find myself relying on the ''instinct'' built up over the years when making a decision as to how to treat a particular orchid. Its one of those nebulous things that can't really be explained well because it involves so many tiny and constant observations and adjustments to get everything right. I'm sure anyone who has been growing for 20 or 30years will know what I mean? WE have some excellent growers in our club who woudn't know the difference between nitrogen and soap! The science is an important part of it of course but in the end a very small part I think. Once you have the basics down, the rest is mostly academic but still interesting.
It reminds me of the time I was working in my old man's engineering shop. We were charged with food producion machine design, manufacture and maintainence. We were old-school working mainly on past knowledge but the owner's son fresh out of engineering uni decided that our approach was wrong and he had all the answers. In reality he had no idea what he was talking about when it came to the practical side of things and eventually had to p**s off and let us get on with it.
So the theory only takes you so far in my view.


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## Rick (Apr 6, 2013)

Ray said:


> Isn't that what we're working toward?
> 
> I know that as I have eschewed the "tribal knowledge" in favor of understanding the science that underlies it, I have become a better grower.



I agree Ray
After getting the "fundamentals down" and still not satisfied with the results of the "tribal knowledge" I would have probably lost another 5000 plants searching for the 1% of plants that work within the constraints of the tribe to claim success. Looking into the fundamentals of epiphyte ecology and chemical environment has made a huge difference in my entire collection, that I wouldn't have been able to sort out for decades waiting for the plants to adapt to me.

What defines science and research is different for everyone. I use hunches based on observation and comparison. I use books/internet. I makeup little experimental tests to glean ideas for new directions or corrections. 

Science to me does not mean I only learn from someone else books/teachings on only the subject of interest. My first hunch on the potassium issue was from my work with freshwater mussels. Then a paper on rice culture moved the idea to plants. It just snowballed from there. 

Now I'll tweak around on pot management for a bit. I find it funny though that I can mess with one of the "sacred cows of the tribal knowledge" by serendipity, and folks comes out of the word work demanding rocket science results and verification. I end up learning/relearning a lot through these challenges. It's sometimes gratifying that at 55 I haven't forgot everything I've learned, and not all of it is obsolete either!


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## ALToronto (Apr 7, 2013)

Stone said:


> In theory, lots of studying and reading and researching _should_ lead to better growing techiniques and it does to a small extent however I believe that even with all the study into nutrients etc which I've undertaken recently and at hort school years ago, I still find myself relying on the ''instinct'' built up over the years when making a decision as to how to treat a particular orchid. Its one of those nebulous things that can't really be explained well because it involves so many tiny and constant observations and adjustments to get everything right. I'm sure anyone who has been growing for 20 or 30years will know what I mean? WE have some excellent growers in our club who woudn't know the difference between nitrogen and soap! The science is an important part of it of course but in the end a very small part I think. Once you have the basics down, the rest is mostly academic but still interesting.
> It reminds me of the time I was working in my old man's engineering shop. We were charged with food producion machine design, manufacture and maintainence. We were old-school working mainly on past knowledge but the owner's son fresh out of engineering uni decided that our approach was wrong and he had all the answers. In reality he had no idea what he was talking about when it came to the practical side of things and eventually had to p**s off and let us get on with it.
> So the theory only takes you so far in my view.



There is a big difference between someone with no experience and someone with experience in another field. 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. 

Sometimes experience means making the same mistakes over and over, and not knowing any better. It's why we have so much crappy concrete making up our buildings, bridges and highways.


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## Rick (Apr 7, 2013)

Stone said:


> I food producion machine design, manufacture and maintainence. We were old-school working mainly on past knowledge but the owner's son fresh out of engineering uni decided that our approach was wrong and he had all the answers. In reality he had no idea what he was talking about when it came to the practical side



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:


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## DavidCampen (Apr 7, 2013)

Rick said:


> Science to me does not mean I only learn from someone else books/teachings on only the subject of interest. My first hunch on the potassium issue was from my work with freshwater mussels. Then a paper on rice culture moved the idea to plants. It just snowballed from there.



Are you referring to the paper by Shaibur that you referenced in the AOS article? That paper did not test a KCL concentration below 700 ppm while the concentration of all the other nutrients combined was about 1/2 of that level and the concentration of any other single nutrient was at less than 1/10 the amount of potassium or chloride. So at best, this paper only shows that KCL becomes toxic at a concentration of 10 times that of any other nutrient. 

Additionally, the paper failed to perform any experiments to differentiate between potassium toxicity and chloride toxicity. You have criticized and discounted papers people have presented here that showed the necessity of potassium levels closely matching the levels of other major nutrients because the experiment failed to control for the effect of the anion, so by the same reasoning, the Shaibur paper should also be discounted.

As for freshwater mussels. Many ocean organisms would not survive in fresh water so by the same analogy from fresh water mussels to orchids we find that orchids should be watered with a 3% sodium chloride solution

There were many other errors in the reasoning you attempted to present in the AOS article and as a result the article fails to present any scientific rationale for your potassium toxicity thesis.


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## keithrs (Apr 7, 2013)

I just curious how soaking moss in water and adding aragonite shows relistic buffering capabilities, when most run large amounts of water through pots with a small amount of Ca ammendment to the mix. Are you saying that if you soak moss in X amount of aragonite that it will buffer it's low pH? Or are you saying that adding X amount to moss as a top dress will buffer 100 ml of Ro water to X level?

I'm not discrediting the research here.... I just can't see how it relates with real world orchid pot environments with ammendments and large amounts of water running threw it!?! 

Maybe I missed something in the last week or so..


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## Rick (Apr 7, 2013)

No You brought up the right question.

Compare the water retention effects in a pot of moss versus the amount of water retained on a vertical mount. 

The static moss example is extreme compared to the mount. But moss/bark/chc in open draining pots are somewhere in between.

Weigh a pot before and after watering. The difference is the amount of water retained that will be in that pot for (?) 3 hours? 3 days? That retained water is equivalent to what is in my capped bottles. 

There are 2 things exerting effects on the water. The moss is releasing acid, the aragonite is releasing a base.

So can you develop a strategy to cope with that retained water chemistry for your individual pots? We generally don't want the pH to fall below 5.5, but we also don't want a lot of alkalinity and TDS to build up in the pot.

Do you use less buffer, water more, add buffer only to incoming water and water more. Now you have some numbers to go with the Italian cooking we do with our pots. It really is like a pot of spaghetti sauce with acidic tomato getting adjusted to taste with spices and seasonings to get things "to taste". But in this case we are trying to read our plants to do the "tasting" of our potting mixes. Usually by the time we find out the sauce has turned to poison, its too late.


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## Rick (Apr 7, 2013)

DavidCampen said:


> Are you referring to the paper by Shaibur that you referenced in the AOS article?
> 
> Additionally, the paper failed to perform any experiments to differentiate between potassium toxicity and chloride toxicity. You have criticized and discounted papers people have presented here that showed the necessity of potassium levels closely matching the levels of other major nutrients because the experiment failed to control for the effect of the anion, so by the same reasoning, the Shaibur paper should also be discounted.



Yes the Shaibur paper looked at very high K levels, but the main interest in the paper was the drop in Ca and Mg in plant tissues with increasing K (not absolute K toxicity values). I have other papers on other plant species (all non orchids) that demonstrate K toxicity at lower levels, but they did not show any physiological mechanism. I also have a paper from Cornell that worked with orchids and saw the same ratio changes in K /Ca/ Mg leaf tissue content as the Shaibur rice example, but at K levels from 50 to 300 ppm. However, I didn't have that paper until after the article went to print. Other papers also work other anions associated with K as the source, so chloride can be ruled out as the active agent in the Shaibur paper. The point of the Shaibur paper was that as K goes up Ca/Mg go down. Apparently this has been well documented by horticulturists (including those working with orchids) for quite some time using K salts with various anions. The rice paper was the first I came across and gets credit where credit is due.

I think your expectations of what researches should be including in their experiments exceeds what can practically be done in a given amount of time and budget.


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## Rick (Apr 7, 2013)

DavidCampen said:


> As for freshwater mussels. Many ocean organisms would not survive in fresh water so by the same analogy from fresh water mussels to orchids we find that orchids should be watered with a 3% sodium chloride solution



?? Most orchids aren't found in the ocean, but are found in proximity to freshwater bodies (that often have mussels in them). Hence the mussel is the "canary in the coal mine" analogy. Or were coal miners out of their minds for trusting a pet bird with their lives. The concept of environmental relevance is implied in the mussel analogy but I guess you are not getting that.

There are a few orchids that live in proximity to oceans, which I also brought up. Namely the brachies. Ocean water is 2/3 sodium chloride. But only has about 350 ppm of K, 450ppm Ca, and over 1000ppm Mg, yet experienced orchid growers say that Brachies are "extremely salt sensitive", and must be watered with pure water with very low feed rates. So are the brachies sensitive to all salts, or are they sensitive to an ion imbalance? How is it that feeding relatively low amounts of a high K fert (with very low Ca/Mg available) is bad for brachies, but they can get hit with 3% seawater and do just fine? So explain what's wrong with that one.


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## Rick (Apr 7, 2013)

DavidCampen;416875
There were many other errors in the reasoning you attempted to present in the AOS article and as a result the article fails to present any scientific rationale for your potassium toxicity thesis.[/QUOTE said:


> I went out in the GH and told my plants that they were actually dead and didn't know it.
> 
> They don't believe me.oke:oke:
> 
> 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:


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## DavidCampen (Apr 7, 2013)

Rick said:


> ?? Most orchids aren't found in the ocean, but are found in proximity to freshwater bodies (that often have mussels in them). Hence the mussel is the "canary in the coal mine" analogy. Or were coal miners out of their minds for trusting a pet bird with their lives. The concept of environmental relevance is implied in the mussel analogy but I guess you are not getting that.



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.



> There are a few orchids that live in proximity to oceans, which I also brought up. Namely the brachies. Ocean water is 2/3 sodium chloride. But only has about 350 ppm of K, 450ppm Ca, and over 1000ppm Mg, yet experienced orchid growers say that Brachies are "extremely salt sensitive", and must be watered with pure water with very low feed rates. So are the brachies sensitive to all salts, or are they sensitive to an ion imbalance? How is it that feeding relatively low amounts of a high K fert (with very low Ca/Mg available) is bad for brachies, but they can get hit with 3% seawater and do just fine? So explain what's wrong with that one.


Then start growing your plants in ocean water and tell me how that works out for you.

Your AOS article is riddled with errors and illogic.


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## Rick (Apr 7, 2013)

DavidCampen said:


> Your AOS article is riddled with errors and illogic.



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.


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## DavidCampen (Apr 7, 2013)

Rick said:


> 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.


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## gonewild (Apr 7, 2013)

Rick said:


> 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?


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## gonewild (Apr 7, 2013)

DavidCampen said:


> 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?


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## gonewild (Apr 7, 2013)

DavidCampen said:


> 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.


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## Stone (Apr 7, 2013)

Rick said:


> 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


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## Stone (Apr 7, 2013)

ALToronto said:


> > 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


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## Rick (Apr 7, 2013)

Stone said:


> 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.


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## gonewild (Apr 7, 2013)

Stone said:


> 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.


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## SlipperKing (Apr 7, 2013)

DavidCampen said:


> 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.


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## Ozpaph (Apr 7, 2013)

Stone said:


> ALToronto said:
> 
> 
> > 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.
> ...


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## DavidCampen (Apr 7, 2013)

SlipperKing said:


> 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.


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## Rick (Apr 7, 2013)

DavidCampen said:


> 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?


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## Rick (Apr 7, 2013)

DavidCampen said:


> 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.


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## DavidCampen (Apr 8, 2013)

Rick said:


> 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.


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## DavidCampen (Apr 8, 2013)

Rick said:


> 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.


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## Stone (Apr 8, 2013)

Ozpaph said:


> Stone said:
> 
> 
> > 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
> ...


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## Stone (Apr 8, 2013)

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


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## Stone (Apr 8, 2013)

Rick said:


> > 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.


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## Ozpaph (Apr 8, 2013)

Stone said:


> Ozpaph said:
> 
> 
> > 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.
> ...


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