# Multipart thread, mineral nutrition of Paphiopedilum



## Roth (May 1, 2008)

I will start to type something quite long, result of my knowledge in paphs requirement and potting mix interactions, as well as knowledge gained from tissue culture. A bit of history in that first part.

First, plant nutrition is never, ever, an exact science. It will forever be impossible to study the activity of K+, NO3- or whatever ion "alone". Increasing or decrasing an ion in a solution will always interfere with the general composition of the solution, including the pH of that solution before and during plant use...

Let's take an example, to study the effect of an increase of K+ in a nutrient solution at pH5.7. 

If you want to supply this ion, you have to supply a salt. KCl, potassium chloride, KOH, potassium hydroxide, or K2SO4 potassium sulfate, KNO3 potassium nitrate. Therefore if you increase K+, you add or increase in the solution the concentration of another ion. K+ is a cation (+) Cl- is an anion (-). Increase K+, and you add chlorine to the solution, or, with the use of KOH, you increase the pH very heavily. If you want to lower the pH increased with the use of KOH, you have to use an acid, that will add another ion in the solution. If you decide to leave the pH of the solution go up, and simply study K+, then you may induce a deficiency or precipitation of other ions...

Mineral nutrition of the plants has to be studied in "batches". It is what makes it so complicated. In the horticulture industry, most of the time the concentration and type of the fertilizers are studied, 20-20-20 at 0.5, 1, and 2 g/L vs. 28-14-14 at 0.5, 1, and 2g/L mixed with calcium nitrate and magnesium nitrate, at the same rate or various rates as an example, and see what performs the best. The interaction with the potting mix will be tested. Foliar analysis are conduced, and some salts can be added to correct a deficiency here and there, according to the "industry standard". Yet, people who have dogs know that chocolate can be deadly, and cats require in their diet some specific aminoacids to perform and survive well.

Orchids, apart from a couple commercial hybrids, are poorly understood, and scientist, to make very simple, simply assume that they have requirements that will fit the general grids used for many plants. In fact, specialists know for sure that certain species and group of species react very badly to some nutrients. Some Australian plants can be quickly killed by a single 10-52-10 application, because they cannot stand of phosphorus. Some alpine cushion plants will be stunted if they are not supplied with certain types of heavy metals ( usually found in their serpentine habitat). 

I have been growing paphs for a long time, and had trouble to understand why certain groups of species are short lived in cultivation, unless luck is taken into account. Paph violascens, bougainvilleanum, sanderianum, randsii, are such "short lived" plants. Occasionnally an individual plant or two will perform very well, or sometimes all the plant in a given location, but that's nothing close to science. Many bacterial rot, root losses, etc... are recorded, and many, many plants end up in the dustbin at the end.

I started asking for foliar analysis in the 90's. Sometimes, the plants would perform badly, but be in the "standard" according to the analysis grid. Therefore I would ask a lot of exotic analysis, molybdenum, unreduced nitrate, nickel, boron, cobalt. I would make a similar analysis with a very healthy wild collected plant too, to make comparison. And the conclusion was pretty stunning: always there was a reason for a plant/group of plant demise.

At the same time, I started to make a lot of flasks. Some of the earlier formulations actually include urea as a nitrogen source, sometimes alone. There was an article written a very long time ago by Joseph Arditti in the Botanical Review, 'factors affecting the germination of orchids seeds', that he presented to me in 1993. The tree trunk effluate, coralorrhiza seeds analysis, and some others factores puzzled me a lot, as they were completely out of range according to the common knowledge of plant nutrition requirement, but completely accurate according to my foliar analysis of wild plants... Thanks to that small book, I could progress very quickly.

First, the ratio Fe:Mn:Zn. In the fertilizer industry, that ratio is usually from 4:2:1 to 4:4:1. In the foliar analysis of healthy and wild collected plants, I got very frequently a ratio of 1:8:4 to 1:8:8... Not exactly something the fertilizers can supply. I did not understand though how some plants were looking that beautiful in cultivation, except a note about the "greening effect" of dithane ( mancozeb) on some crops. I do not remember where I read that one, but anyway, a spray of dithane monthly made very, very beautiful plants. Most professionnal growers used dithane at that time. Since those old days, most switched to more "powerful" fungicides, creating a nutrient deficiency in their plants...

The old firm of Vacherot & Lecoufle ( now down to low standard unfortunately...) was using Kocide 101 at very, very full strenght sprays weekly, including dendrobium, miltoniopsis. Apart from that they used tap water, very hard ( I remember an EC of 800 before adding the fertilizer) + nitric acid to bring down the pH7.8 to 5.7, and addition of 1g/L of fertilizer (nitrogen source, only ammonium...). They had really great, gorgeous plants, and no sicknesses.

Then, I was amazed at how cattleya seedlings in flasks would grow when grown with urea only, and a bit of peptone. Definitely much faster than when NO3- or NH4+ were used. I tried cold filtration of urea added to the sterile media, and the effects were always impressive and immediate. Floricultura in the Netherlands and the Eric Young Orchid Foundation told me that they were using high urea fertilizers to get beautiful plants. According to Alan Moon, it was even absolutely required for some genus...

After those "discoveries", I soon realized that there was a lot to learn about orchid and paphiopedilum nutrition. That's why I started to experiment, in flasks first with Gelrite ( more "inert" than straight agar, that can contain micronutrients and many impurities...), then on plants, completing my knowledge with analysis of soil, plants, potting mix, and growing/stunted plants. I will share progressively my findings ( with foliar analysis for the scepticals) in this thread...


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## Corbin (May 1, 2008)

Over my head but thanks. I'll keep reading and learn.


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## NYEric (May 1, 2008)

Just send us the plants we'll urea on them!


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## Rick (May 1, 2008)

Hurry with part two Sanderianum!!!


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## SlipperFan (May 1, 2008)

Interesting. I'll look forward to reading what you learn.


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## Pete (May 1, 2008)

interesting. looking forward to the rest..

who the hell uses 10-52-10 btw??


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## paphioboy (May 2, 2008)

yay! Chemistry lessons...


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## myxodex (May 2, 2008)

Very interesting ... I await part two !


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## Ernie (May 2, 2008)

Hmmm, dithane provides manganese and kocide supplies copper? So your experiment is looking at these elements? 

-Ernie


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## cnycharles (May 2, 2008)

Interesting information. I was wondering when I was doing some reading this morning about seaweed having the right amount or proportions of manganese and zinc? The article I was reading about kelp extracts said that they had both elements in it but don't know how much they might have, though different seaweed extracts probably aren't created equally. Also was reading about fulvic acid and it's ability to take minerals present but not readily available and taking them into solution and greatly benefitting plant growth. Is this something that could be helpful to the species you mention (and others) without having to use a fungicide? I'm always looking for a way to not have to put on spray equipment...


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## Ray (May 4, 2008)

Based solely upon what has been presented so far, this is going to be really good, and should probably be published as-a-whole somewhere.

An interesting observation about the kelp extracts, Charles. It's also quite interesting that urea - which we all have been taught _cannot_ be used by orchids - had such an effect. I love it.


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## Roth (May 4, 2008)

OK, part 2 on the soon way hehe...

Just to reply to some questions over there before jumping to the next section. 

10-52-10 has been used by many growers, including AnTec, and I still use it on all of my orchids and plants. It has absolutely no "bloom booster effect", despite some claims that high-P fertilizers can achieve such a result.

I use it in 3 ways, one to promote rooting after repotting, I use it for 1 month nonstop at 0.5g/L. It has wonderful effect on any kind of orchids. The second, as a routine schedule for paphs, about once monthly to once every 6 weeks, same rate. The third, I use it as my MAJOR fertilizer for the parvis, delenatii, armeniacum, micranthum and malipoense ( don't do that on emersonii or hangianum, or they will look really, really funny !).

About the Kocide observation. Of course it supplies some copper, but the main, key point, is that high pH + micronutrients does not cause a toxicity in paphs at all, and the plants are able to take up what they require, even if the copper ions are found at the root system level ( where kocide ends up sooner or later) with an acidic pH. I will explain why it is so important later. 

Kelp extracts and such compounds. There is a product in England called "Maxicrop" which is exactly that, a buffered kelp extract. It was used heavily by the Eric Young, and maybe is still used, whether in rockwhool or other mixes ( a funny note, the EYOF always killed their complex paphs in rockwhool, that's why they had to use bark for them but the largest complex paph grower in the Netherlands use insulation rockwhool as a potting mix...). I have seen, and used myself as a flasking mix. One flasking service in England used to use Maxicrop, 10g sugar, 0.5g Calcium nitrate and 3g/L Gelrite, byebye. They were doing wonderful paphs flasks with that...

I type part II now...


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## cnycharles (May 4, 2008)

Ray said:


> An interesting observation about the kelp extracts, Charles. It's also quite interesting that urea - which we all have been taught _cannot_ be used by orchids - had such an effect. I love it.



In that article I was reading the other morning, they also talked about using hydrozyme or hygrozyme and it was also one of the tests that had good results. I stopped at one of the local hydroponic shops last night and got some, and the owner mentioned that another local orchid grower was using it and was very happy with it. Ray, (I know slight thread hijacking sorry) have you tried this, I will be soon and may end up being a great addition to the whole s/h approach. As soon as I can find some fulvic acid will try it on some of my orchids and non-orchid plants.

About our supposedly not being able to use urea (or not a great idea if they grow too quickly and weakly) more of my informal research if you want to call it that shows in so many cases if there is a big business somewhere that wants to make lots of money they will knock the really cheap way to do something well (expensive fertilizer instead of urea, many other things) then the cheap way will be attacked incessantly until nobody believes in it anymore. As another outside example I was just reading about oils for cooking and it turns out some of the best/stable ones that have been decried in the past for frying are palm oil and beef fat. All the highly processed high volume ones you find in stores are largely not good for you even if they aren't a 'trans-fat'. Hijacking aside, this is a very interesting thread and I await future installments with great interest!


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## Roth (May 4, 2008)

I had of course some ideas that turned out to be wrong, and one of the main problem was to design something that is accurate for studying the behavior of paphs with given nutrient solutions.

A lot of problems were facing, and I found them out one by one later, only to restart again studying, studying... with the bank account going sharply down paying many analysis. A lot of questions.

The first idea, I wanted to study MINERAL NUTRITION, so I had to find an "inert" media right ?

I wanted to make it as "scientifical" as possible, but I soon realized that it is very complicated, if not nearly impossible. So I had to be as close as possible to that aim.

In fact, I discovered soon that, apart maybe from Teflon and glass beads ( acid washed please, to remove the production byproducts...), there is no really "inert" media. Rockwhool is on the alkaline side, and slowly attacked when watered with acidic water. All the porous stuff, whether clay, lavarock, perlite, would sooner or later capture ions, cristallize whatever, release others things... Bark, sphagnum, of course are far from inert.

In flasks, most agar have impurities ( in fact, one of the very best agar available, Daishin agar, has a lot of impurities, micronutrients, etc...). I decided to use Gelrite, but the bonds that make the matrix solid are made by divalent cations... Calcium and Magnesium. So an increase in those two ions would solve the problem. Unfortunately, that was plain... WRONG ! A trivalent cation can actually displace calcium, and be bound, therefore unavailable to the plant instantly after sterilization. As the plants grow up, they will dissolve the matrix somehow ( by acidifying their environment), and use calcium and magnesium that were the links. Studying calcium or magnesium accurately is therefore very difficult with the gelrite use.

After that, the other problem is "what analysis to order from a lab ???". Sounds a dumb question, but there are a lot of protocols to follow to make analysis.

I will give a simple example. Wash coconut coir with distilled water 50 times. Give it to a lab to analyse. Some will report no sodium, no potassium. Some will report very high figure, for the same batch. The reason is very simple. 

The extraction before analysis is very important. One can make a water extract, acid extract, a destructive analysis ( everything is converted into ashes...), an alkali extract, a barium sulfate extract... etc... Discussing with the lab of Bas van Buuren, they informed that there were such problems with the foliar analysis. A plant can have a very high iron content, and be iron deficient. There is another parameter that I did not think about before ' availability'. Some ions can be in an unavailable form in the leaves, so a destructive analysis of the leaves would give a rate of iron as an example that is acceptable, but the plant is starving completely.

I was getting ready for a lot of headaches. Plus, I had to find "the" lab that would make everything I wanted. Most of the labs are used to work with large samples, and I wanted them to work with 50-100g of fresh leaves, not 2kg ( one lab asked me for that !!!). Then I needed to have a very accurate lab that could do the weird analysis, nickel, molybdenum, NO3 foliar content, some organics too, etc... 

Apart from that, I wanted a pathology lab, and a soil analysis lab. I ended up with Bas van Buuren Lab for the soil, Wageningen Consulting for the path lab, and Green Control ( public joint venture of Wageningen) for the foliar analysis. They were very helpful, and I had ( I still have) to follow them all the time, to be able to compare what is going on. One very important thing, we are not bees, and we cannot fly from one lab to the other. Each lab has its specific protocols, normalized, and it is not guaranteed that 2 labs will have the very same results. On the other side, all the results of a very good lab are standardized against their own internal scale, therefore the results can be compared. I discussed the price, and the latest prices were 120 euros for the path lab if PCR was required, 30 euros/substrate analysis ( poor guys, they even had to analyze gooey agar... they are really helpful for that), and 60 euros/foliar analysis. All "complete".

The weirdos that I asked for ( and I know that, regarding orchids, I have been the only one to study those !!!) were nitrites (!), selenium, chromium, even mercury ( rockwhool has a very high content sometimes of lead and mercury...).

The pathology lab was included to detect pathogens if a chlorosis or unhealthy plant did not show any mineral problems.

The very early analysis that I asked for ( the "common ones" that everyone in the horticulture asks for) were completely useless, first because when they are incomplete, it is impossible to guess what is going on ( I will explain the interaction, but as an example, the total N content of a leaf is useless if one does not get the NO3 content and the Molybdenum content), and second, because they did not fit any "standard interpretation key" anywhere.

I still have that first analysis of very, very strong, "maybe wild collected" stonei that I imported from Sarawak with a CITES. 

On dry matter :
In percent N 1.3. P 0.6, K 0.9, Ca 1.2, Mg 0.6
In ppm Cu 130, Mn 1823, Zn 636, Fe 116, B 50

Conclusion of the lab, the plants were in deep ****, because that analysis showed major deficiencies and toxicities. But the plants were gorgeous. I asked another lab to analyse others stonei, from a completely different source, fresh wild collected leaves from Bakun ( Sarawak). The resultats were nearly the same...

That's where I started my thinking that mineral nutrition of orchids is poorly understood, or even unknown. After that analysis I decided to make as many analysis as possible, and build up a database. I had at that time the idea that paphs can behave more or less as saprophytes for some of the species, or at least use some aminoacids and oligopeptids present around the roots.


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## Rick (May 4, 2008)

Sanderianum said:


> I had at that time the idea that paphs can behave more or less as saprophytes for some of the species, or at least use some aminoacids and oligopeptids present around the roots.



Could this be where the micoorhizea fungus be part of the story??


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## cnycharles (May 4, 2008)

just a thought based on how some people collect leaf samples: what if someone were to only take lower leaves as samples since they could take a healthy chunk and still leave part of the leaf, and as a result take leaves where nitrogen had started to migrate upwards up into the plant? the whole plant might look great but the tested leaves might be 'lacking' in nitrogen because of it's moving upwards or into other parts of the plant? also there could be a cycle where nitrogen is in leaves, and then when roots start to grow some may be taken out and moved to forming root tissue, or if it has recently flowered may be low in nutrients, or.... just some ideas.


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## Rick (May 4, 2008)

Ray said:


> Based solely upon what has been presented so far, this is going to be really good, and should probably be published as-a-whole somewhere.
> 
> An interesting observation about the kelp extracts, Charles. It's also quite interesting that urea - which we all have been taught _cannot_ be used by orchids - had such an effect. I love it.



I think the crop plants that typically get urea based fertilizers use it through bacterial intermediaries (not directly). I'm sure orchids can use urea ammonia if appropriate soil bacteria are present. However, orchids are often kept in more inert and disturbed media where the populations of useful bacteria are unstable too.


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## Jerry Delaney (May 5, 2008)

Perhaps the passage from Julius Caeser that "and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death" is closer to the truth than we realize. I can't even begin to imagine the complexity of setting up experiments Sanderianum is contemplating to obtain meaningful data. Add to this the law of limiting factors and it completely boggles what mind I have left. Like you Ray, I have to laugh about the controversy concerning urea. Some years back Fred Bergman published a brief study in Phals involving urea vs non urea fertilizers and in short concluded that not only was the urea utilized, but produced more robust plants than non urea fertilizer. I felt the experiment was not well controlled but, until WR Grace took them over, perhaps more orchids were grown with the old Peters 30-10-10 than all other fertilizers combined.


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## Roth (May 5, 2008)

Then I got hold of 2 very different species, Paphiopedilum mastersianum, and emersonii. 

I had plants cultivated for a while, and "new" plants for mastersianum. The latter invariable are much healthier than the former ones as a rule. Mastersianum in the wild has very dark green, shiny leaves, and is a very fast grower. In cultivation the plants tends to become more on the yellowish side, and most die after some years of being chlorotic and necrotic. Only a very few mastersianum in the world survive more than 5 years in cultivation, one has to be realistic...

Emersonii has very dark green, shiny leaves, and grows very fast the first couple of months after import. Then it will progressively slows down, up to the point that the plant make a miniature shoot and collapse. The same stands true for hangianum. Most emersonii in cultivation died after some years, or at least showed considerable shrinkage.

I did not, at that time, realize the importance of a more detailed analysis, so I asked for an analysis with only a couple new parameters compared to the stonei analysis.

Let's start with the mastersianum. For accuracy, one has to take the same age leaves from all the plants, the general practice for orchids is to take leaf N°3-4 from the newest growing leaf. Then it is possible to have a way to compare the results all the time.

* Beautiful plants
In % : N 0.86 P 0.43 K 0.91 Mg 0.21 Ca 1.04 Na 0.11
In ppm : B 62 Zn 180 Cu 11.7 Mn 170 Fe 32 (!) Mo 11 NO3- 49.2

* Chlorotic plants ( still healthy but not as nice as the fresh ones)
In % : N 0.91 P 0.37 K 0.85 Mg 0.16 Ca 0.94 Na 0.08
In ppm : B 12 Zn 51 Cu 7 Mn 137 Fe 480 Mo 1 NO3- 293

All the elements expressent in % did not show anything really out of range between healthy and sick plants. Note that those figures are complete out or range if compared to any charts published for plants. Therefore I quickly found out that NO PLANT CHART can be applied "like that" to paphs ( and other orchids, I did not do only that work with paphs).

In the ppm, that was a different story. There were 3 main things

Boron level was quite low in the chlorotic plants, as was Zn
Fer was at too high level in the chlorotic plants.

And the most important: those damned plants were Molybdenum deficent !!! With a "standard" analysis, the results would show only a problem with Iron and Zn, maybe ( but yet, compared to standard charts, the figures are out of range, so one has to have analysis for healthy, clean plants). First Mo was lower in the yellowish plants, but the NO3- level was too high, showing clearly that Molybdenum deficiency. It is a very common diagnostic, but no one dared to study that on paphs...

That's one of the reasons I was very reluctant to use fertilizers with a high nitrate content to start with. I think that some people have chlorotic plants using MSU because of that molybdenum deficiency. Molybdenum is very trick as the ions containing molybdenum are easyli bound...

Emersonii ( the earlier imports from Viet Nam, beautiful green leaves, medium sized plants), leaves from freshly imported plants, untampered.

In % : N 0.98 P 0.18 K 0.97 Mg 0.26 Ca 0.98 Na 0.18
In ppm : B 128.8 Zn 236.1 Cu 10.8 Mn 831 Fe <5 Mo 17 NO3- 38.9

A lot of years later, the huonglanae ( like the one I pictured), fresh results :

In % : N 1.02 P 0.31 K 1.01 Mg 0.31 Ca 0.91 Na 0.26
In ppm : B 96 Zn 219 Cu 18.1 Mn 1318 Fe 14 Mo 15 NO3- 61.6

( some results omitted for huonglanae, I will write more on the additionnal parameters later...)

WOW !!! By all the horticulture standard those plants are... DEAD !!! Such high boron levels are deadly to many crops. The iron was below detection limit the first time, and years later, only 14 ppm. The sodium is about 25% the potassium content, The ratio N:K:Ca is 1:1:1 nearly. Well, such plants cannot live. Even the lab director when he got hold of the results for the earlier emersonii analysis provided me with another additionnal analysis free, because he said looking at those dark green leaves, it is impossible to obtain such results... Results were the same.

That's one of the reasons I started to understand that many people pompously speak about "plant physiology", but they would be totally inapt to explain such results... I suspect there are a lot of plants that have analysis complete haywire compared to the common standards.

We can note however, from those 3 very different species, some general trends that seemed at that time to be common to all paph species.


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## Roth (May 5, 2008)

Another note about how the analysis were done. The leaves were cleaned with citric acid several times, and rinsed with pure water.

The preparation was made by crushing at 300 microns the samples
Dry weight was measured by heating to 105°C in an over ( got the specifications brand and type of oven...)
N total was calculated using the Dumas way.
P, K, Ca, Mg, Na, Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn, B. Mineralization dry state, use of HF, Plasma emission analysis ICP-AES
Cr, Cd, Co, Ni, Pb Mineralization dry state, use of HF, measurement by Atomic Absorption AET-AAS
Hg, 900°C under O2, concentration and reduction of Hg vapors, measurement in cold vapors by atomic absorption
S, nitro-perchloric mneralization, and ICP-AES
NO3, extraction hot water, transformation in NO2 and colorimetric measurement.

A few other analysis will be mentioned later...


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## myxodex (May 5, 2008)

Very interesting ! Did you analyse any paphs from serpentine substrates ? I know that with some crops the Zn levels in soil can have an effect on fungal pathogen resistance ... although the plants grow OK when Zn levels are low (not too low of course) they are prone to infection. Possibly Mn and Cu can act similarly ? I wonder whether this could be another factor why some species are difficult to maintain in cultivation ?
Thanks, ... keep it coming !
Cheers,
Tim


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## Ray (May 5, 2008)

> I think that some people have chlorotic plants using MSU because of that molybdenum deficiency.


Interesting. I have been using the Greencare MSU RO formula exclusively at 125 ppm N at every watering for 5 years, and I see no signs of chlorosis whatsoever.

Of course, it could be that by making the nutrient solution as readily available as I do allows the the plants to capture more of the moly.


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## Roth (May 5, 2008)

Ray said:


> Interesting. I have been using the Greencare MSU RO formula exclusively at 125 ppm N at every watering for 5 years, and I see no signs of chlorosis whatsoever.
> 
> Of course, it could be that by making the nutrient solution as readily available as I do allows the the plants to capture more of the moly.



Actually the term "chlorosis" is not always appropriate, let's say many plants will experience "bleaching", or lack of lushness. The plants coming from the wild of paphs as an example have very beautiful dark, shiny leaves. Malipoense or micranthum ( and I have the same now with the plants I grow after those results) have kind of "diamonds" in the leaves, it is hard to explain, but the light reflects in a very peculiar way, like if there were thousands of glass pieces in the leaves. 

When I could mimic that by adjusting the fertilizer program, I have malipoense blooming yearly, which is something nearly unheard in the orchid industry. As I will have finished to type everything, I will post pictures.

How do you adjust the pH of your fertilizer mix too ? I will discuss later about a way to bypass that problem by using some organic compounds...

The all nitrate feeding program has been shown by Floricultura and the Wageningen University to induce some chlorosis, and at any cost, slower growth than a mix nitrate/ammonium or mostly urea fertilizer. I will discuss about the variations ( I tried a lot of potting mixes, "scientifically", with the soil analysis...)

Myxodex, I will discuss about the serpentine paphs too later, and yes I did make analysis. Just to make a short note, someone was manufacturing in his kitchen "Serpentex" for some nepenthes enthusiasts in Germany. I used it with great results. Serpentine can have very high level of nickel, and of chromium, I will explain the very, heavy consequences of the nickel level in paphs plants ( they can account for delayed/nongerminating/sterile seeds in my experience...). More with the next part !


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## michelangelo (May 6, 2008)

Dear Sanderianum,

I just remember having read in a celebrated book some lines which may be of interest :

« No genus or race of orchids that has yet been brought under cultivation has yielded so readily, and we may add, so strikingly, to its influence as the Cypripedia. […] The most obvious of cultural influence has been the development of more robust foliage of a brighter colour, especially in those species with tesselated leaves ; the normally one-floweed scape occasionally becomes two-flowered ; the scapes themselves become more robust, often more elongated, and produce larger flowers, generally attended with some modification in colour. Doubtless the chief cause of these changes is the more abundant and more regular supply of food material, by which the plants acquire a vigour rarely seen in those imported from their native countries. » Veitch, _A Manual of Orchidaceous Plants,_ vol. II, p. 9, under _Cultural Note. _

I have been growing orchids, and especially slipper orchids for much more than half a century, and have always found that these plants grew consistently better in the media I used when I was a young man, that is, the very media Veitch did use in his time: good live sphagnum fibre, various kinds of peat, forest humus, loam, oak and beech leaves, fern roots, and the like, in clay pots. Plants were also much easier to grow well, without any manure of any kind. (Moly was probably present at the right strength…).

Probably would the analysis of the soil in which our paphs grow in the wild (mainly on the ground itself, but also in the fissures and cracks of the rocks, or in the forks of the big branches of trees) be another good approach to their nutritionnal needs, as well of course as the analysis of our so-called old-fashioned media.

Needless to say, I am lost in admiration before your messages and the enormous amount of work they represent, and am looking forward to reading many others of such high level in the near future !

michelangelo


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## SlipperKing (May 6, 2008)

"The third, I use it as my MAJOR fertilizer for the parvis, delenatii, armeniacum, micranthum and malipoense ( don't do that on emersonii or hangianum, or they will look really, really funny !)."
Xavier,
What is your reasoning for using a "bloom boost" as your "major" source of nutrients for the mottled leaf parvis?

Rick H


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## Roth (May 6, 2008)

SlipperKing said:


> "The third, I use it as my MAJOR fertilizer for the parvis, delenatii, armeniacum, micranthum and malipoense ( don't do that on emersonii or hangianum, or they will look really, really funny !)."
> Xavier,
> What is your reasoning for using a "bloom boost" as your "major" source of nutrients for the mottled leaf parvis?
> 
> Rick H



There was at first no reasoning. I watched my plants in a bark/cocofiber (the old trouble-free material sold years ago...), Dolokal lime ( 5kg/m3 of potting mix), and PG-Mix ( 5 kg/m3 too... slow release fertilizer). The two latter were mixed with high quality peat before being added to the 75:25 bark:cocofiber mix ( it is not CHC, well, it looked a little bit like that, but irregular, nearly black and spongy material, I will make posts later about the CHC and how to use it foolproof in all cases, I am just waiting for a patent to be granted ).

I use for all my plants, no exception, a 10-52-10 fertilizer after repotting. It makes very nice roots, very quickly ( spectacular on vandaceous as well !). I noticed that those mottled leafed paphs ( I forgot to mention, vietnamense does NOT like it at all !!!), delenatii, micranthum, armeniacum, malipoense, jackii, and all the brachys (I can confirm, thaianum as well !) had a very fast growth spurt after "repotting" and each time I applied that 10-52-10 in my fertilizer schedule. So I decided to go for a mostly 10-52-10 feeding schedule for that group. 

I found it works wonders as long as the potting includes carbonate ( calcium carbonate is perfectly fine), and as long as the plants are supplied with extra micronutrients. Micranthum will mature a growth the same year it is initiated as an example... I will explain more on that later, and why it works. It took me years to find out why it works so well...

Michelangelo !

I did the soil analysis, but I type slowly, many papers to compile too to write that ( and putting on the forum forces me to do, I planned to write a complete paper on that, but was too lazy, or busy to do !!!)

Definitely the fern roots, leaf mould and the like are a very good source of nutrients for the paphs. I have seen really great paphs in ferns roots ( not tree ferns, but really asplenium and the like roots !) and leaf mould, and some type of sphagnum ( for that purpose, our European sphagnum is better than the NZ sphagnum, and I got a similar one from Viet Nam too). I have the analysis including for 3 different sphag, so I will put these online later.

But all of those mixes are "bad" too in the way that first they cannot be international ( chilean sphag moss as an example is very different from the NZ one or the whatever one people can have locally...), and second, they cannot be standardized for cultivation of a very large quantity of plants, at least commercially ( who would sell leaf moulds or washed asplenium roots those days ?). That's why I tried to find the way to make something "standard".


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## Hien (May 17, 2008)

Ray said:


> Based solely upon what has been presented so far, this is going to be really good, and should probably be published as-a-whole somewhere.
> 
> An interesting observation about the kelp extracts, Charles. It's also quite interesting that urea - which we all have been taught _cannot_ be used by orchids - had such an effect. I love it.



In the AOS magazine issue July 2002 there is an article by Fred J Bergman
who debunks the "No Urea theory"
In fact the article states that the tested plants & flowers became better & have more substance compare with the non-urea plants


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## SlipperFan (May 17, 2008)

Hien said:


> In the AOS magazine issue July 2002 there is an article by Fred J Bergman
> who debunks the "No Urea theory"
> In fact the article states that the tested plants & flowers became better & have more substance compare with the non-urea plants



And yet, other studies I've read (don't ask me where at this point...) clearly state the urea needs soil microorganisms to be effective, and these are not found in the typical orchid medias.


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## Rick (May 17, 2008)

SlipperFan said:


> And yet, other studies I've read (don't ask me where at this point...) clearly state the urea needs soil microorganisms to be effective, and these are not found in the typical orchid medias.



At least not initially, but from my experience in waste treatment, no substrates are truly sterile, and they can kick in pretty fast if they are happy.


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## NYEric (May 19, 2008)

This is so interesting, yet I still find myself waiting for a definitive mineral nutrition guide for diff species.


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## Rick (May 19, 2008)

NYEric said:


> This is so interesting, yet I still find myself waiting for a definitive mineral nutrition guide for diff species.



Me too


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## UweM (Oct 12, 2009)

up to date I find this interest thread - what a pity that it finished.

Here you can see a table with more information:

the first infos I picked up from the Orchid Digest, for the chamb. liemianum, niveum and Arundina I pick the soil from habitat and give it to an orchidfriend for analyse.

The value from callosum is from a cultivate plant.







the values are in mg/litre 

Uwe


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## biothanasis (Oct 12, 2009)

Thank you for the tips Owe!


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## NYEric (Oct 13, 2009)

Yay! We should expand on this.


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## Ruth (Oct 13, 2009)

I don't think I have ever seen any fertilizer that is 10-52-10. Where would one find this?


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## paphioboy (Oct 13, 2009)

> I don't think I have ever seen any fertilizer that is 10-52-10. Where would one find this?



A company from Thailand manufactures one.. The label is in Thai, so sorry, I can't read it.. Not sure if available where you are..


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## Roth (Oct 13, 2009)

PlantProd 10-52-10 or the Peters 9-45-15 , they are readily available...


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## UweM (Oct 14, 2009)

Higher value of Ca, Mg, Mn, Zn than N, P, K in leaves and soil....

Who is feeding the Paphs additional with the first elements?

15 years ago an orchid friend was feeding his Paph. niveum with more Na; the result: leafspan (niveum !) = 40 cm and the flower stalk was nearly 35 cm!
Poorly he can't remind the high of value from Na


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## Ruth (Oct 15, 2009)

Thanks for the source of the fertilizer, I have a couple of paphs I will try it on.


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## TyroneGenade (Oct 16, 2009)

UweM said:


> Higher value of Ca, Mg, Mn, Zn than N, P, K in leaves and soil....
> 
> Who is feeding the Paphs additional with the first elements?



I've worked some coral chips (essentially Ca, Mg and Phosphate) into the bark mix which I guess will boost the Ca and Mg content. This little blurb (http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18306021) is interesting... Coir may be a good source of Zn and B for Paphs and with some rice husks worked into the mix one can get the Mn as well. Interestingly, coral has high values of Mn (as much as 100 ppm). Perhaps the best medium would be a mix of coir and coral?


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## Roth (Oct 16, 2009)

UweM said:


> Higher value of Ca, Mg, Mn, Zn than N, P, K in leaves and soil....
> 
> Who is feeding the Paphs additional with the first elements?
> 
> ...



Actually for Mn and Zn, I spray/drench with Dithane - Mancozeb quite frequently. I found out that when I do not do that, the leaves are a little bit bleached out. There were many reports from the horticulture industry about a "greening" effect of mancozeb. 

Ca and Mg, with my base dressing of the substate, are supplied, and I use Mg sulfate from time to time. So far, Calcium is plentiful with the type of loess I use in my mix, from time to time a heavy spray with calcium ammonium nitrate, and that's done...

Na, I think that we tried to avoid that one for too long, but it is part of lifeforms anyway. 

The keypoint of the whole story is that most of the "plant nutrition scientists" do not have any idea about specific genus or species requirement, so they simplified in their dumbness that all plants are equal and need the same...

It is of course completely wrong, try to give limestone to a sarracenia, or feed live sphagnum with osmocote, give to some proteas a high P fertilizer, use a corn fertilizer full strenght on a dendrobium cuthbertsonii, or anything like that and you end up with a big disaster. It just proove that different plants have different requirements, something that the fertilizer companies usually do not like to hear. They want their sales very simple, NPK, and cannot afford to do the cuthbertsonii specific fertilizer, the paph sanderianum specific fertilizer... It is understandable, but they cannot claim that one fertilizer will suit all. 

Of course as well, you can lower the rate of fertilizer, but then you proportionally lower the micronutrients, and anyway if there is 5ppm Fe and 2 ppm Mn to 1 g of 20-20-20, when you use 0.1g, you get only 0.5 and 0.2, which can be far too low. The only way is to make home made, custom tailored fertilizers at home, something I did for many years, but I feel tired to do so sometimes. I am pretty sure that the plants are happier with specific fertilizers, but it is simply too much work. I would tend to think that the better way would be to have a combination like that:

- NPK only fertilizer
- Magnesium sulfate
- Calcium nitrate eventually
- Chelated iron
- Others micros including Zn, Mn, etc... 

This would allow to keep the micros high, whilst lowering the NPK. With the commercial fertilizers, you must lower everything or nothing, therefore ending up with suboptimal levels of micros compared to the NPK...

Some paphs require this, some that, some hate this... One of the main reasons why things like paph papuanum - the zieckianum, not the violascens type..., wentworthianum, bougainvilleanum, etc... die in cultivation is that they have specific requirements for their nutrition. First, they accumulate iron to toxic levels very quickly, second they need a lot of micronutrients apart from iron, Mn, Zn, and Ni... Failure to do so, and the plants are bleached out and very sensitive to various rots and ailments.


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## TyroneGenade (Oct 17, 2009)

Sanderianum said:


> - NPK only fertilizer
> - Magnesium sulfate
> - Calcium nitrate eventually
> - Chelated iron
> - Others micros including Zn, Mn, etc...



So what would you suggest the best all round Paph fertilizer would be? How many ppm Fe, Zn, Mn, Ca, Mg, N, K & PO4? I work in a lab and could pretty easily "whip" up a concentrated micro and macro mix for my Paphs.

tt


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## Rick (Oct 17, 2009)

I don't think you can ever have a perfect nutritional supplement for all paph species for the reasons Sanderianum has posted. A good "all-around" mix would certainly be a compromise for many species.

Look at this another way. If all nutrition requirements were the same for all Paph species then they should all have broader geographical and geological ranges rather than being spaced out in small scattered single species communities (we see up to only 3-5 species at time are even close to truly sympatric).

Even as homogeneous as the human species is there doesn't appear to be a perfect diet that supports every one equally.

I like Sanderianum's "priority of nutriets" idea.


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## Ray (Oct 18, 2009)

Rick said:


> Look at this another way. If all nutrition requirements were the same for all Paph species then they should all have broader geographical and geological ranges...


Maybe I'm just reading this wrong before my coffee, but isn't that backwards?

Seems to me that the different species have evolved - to some extent - based upon the nutrients locally available (all else being equal - which it's not). 

Consider that there were evolutionary precursors that may have been quite widespread. Those in one area, because of the localized nutrients, evolved into what we now know as species "A". Some that were exposed to a different array might have become "B".

After eons of "line breeding", as it were, the metabolisms have become so finely tuned to those nutrients, that if you tried to cross-populate the areas, they would be unable to thrive.

Of course, that also suggests that if the misplaced plants at least survived (if not thrived) to the point of reproduction, or if the seeds were somehow translocated, some might have a genetic twist allowing them to do better, and eventually a new population would grow in a different nutritional zone.

So then...is that new population going to be the same species, a variety of it, or a different, but similar species?

OK, coffee is ready. I'll probably come back to this later and ask "what was I thinking?".


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## Roth (Oct 18, 2009)

Ray said:


> Of course, that also suggests that if the misplaced plants at least survived (if not thrived) to the point of reproduction, or if the seeds were somehow translocated, some might have a genetic twist allowing them to do better, and eventually a new population would grow in a different nutritional zone.
> 
> So then...is that new population going to be the same species, a variety of it, or a different, but similar species?



The same question would apply when we do an in-vitro seed sowing... Maybe we start to select something we have no idea about when we use the tissue culture medium. I am not completely sure that the plants that we grow in cultivation would survive in the wild. 

Back to the natural hybrids vs. artificial hybrids using supposedly the same parents, maybe the natural hybrids look better because they have been pressure selected by the environment as opposed to peaceful life in flask and nursery, and this could involve genetics of the plant as well.

Let's think, some jungle sanderianum plants can stand of a lot of iron in their died when they are grown artificially. Most jungle sands cannot stand of, and die after a couple of years. 

No plant of giant type of sanderianum can stand of iron anyway, I have a few dozen for years, and the only time they got a fertilizer with chelated iron, they took 2-3 years to recover from that with bleached leaves and iron necrosis... The foliar analysis showed that they intoxicated so quickly with iron that it is even hard to believe.

Now, let's say that the genes that allow some sands to stand of iron are located very closely to the genes that control petal length, or are part of in a way or another, though a metabolic pathway. It means that possibly the plants that we grow and are iron-resistant will have short petals. 

In the sanderianum case, I am inclined to think that the sand plants that are iron-resistant are not really showy, just an observation.

For me, but I became difficult with so many sanderianums bloomed and grown over the years  a nice plant is about a meter leafspan and petals at least 90cm... or the pygmy one, 30 cm leafspan and very dark 40 cm flowers :evil:

The delenatii Dunkel/vinicolor/whatever you want to call it is growing in a limestone area, unlike the standard delenatii. It hates acidic conditions actually.

So maybe we select through nutrition and artificial culture plants that will have different floral characteristics from the jungle ones, not even by breeding and selecting, but by the fertilizer we supply to them.

I have seen myself some natural seedlings in greenhouses, I remember of niveum, concolor, chamberlainianum, and praestans. For the former 3, there were only few plants, but growing extremely strongly, far stronger than anything in flask I have ever seen. Maybe we keep in flasks a lot of genetically sick plants, but that are adapted to our artificial growing conditions, who knows...

When I went to see the rothschildianum in the wild a couple of times - nothing to be proud of or especially difficult, the access is easy, and there are many, many colonies - I have bee surprised by some colonies. There was far more variation in the hundreds of plants of some colonies than in any selfing/sibling ever done, from 20 cm leafed plants up to 2m monsters next to each others, rough leaves like sandpaper, smooth leaves, soft, hard, big, small. dark green, yellowish. And it has really nothing to do with the light or anything like that, just genetic variability. I have never seen that in any seed-grown roths. Maybe some of those types just die at the protocorm stage when we do the sowing...


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## paphioboy (Nov 10, 2009)

Sanderianum, any updates to this thread..?  

IMHO, I think nature does it best.. From my limited experience, I have tried various potting media, and the most organic substances resulted in the best root growth. I have observed (from pictures) that paphs almost always grow with ferns in the wild. I assume that there might be some symbiotic relationship, or the fern leaves contain just the right amount of micronutrients so when they decay, the nutrients become available to the paph. I did use fern leaves to pot up some paphs (put a few lumps of charcoal, with or without limestone, add fern leaves and roots and then top with a layer of soil + sand + crushed charcoal), and the root growth was very good. But the only problem is that fungal attacks might occur in wet weather and the medium needs frequent replacing. In the medium I'm currently using (leca + charcoal + limestone + asplenium fern root), the roots grow well but not as rapid as they used to, but this more inorganic mix is more suitable as I'm away most of the time..


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## paphioboy (Nov 10, 2009)

And cocopeat works wonders too..  The one I bought was labelled as a mix for seedling plants (regular non-orchids)..


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## etex (Nov 13, 2009)

This was an awesome thread. There is a huge body of knowledge here!! Let's keep the research and sharing of information coming. I have learned so much in the short time I have been here from you all!


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## Ray (Nov 14, 2009)

I agree, Tex. That's what makes this one of the best forums available.


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## Rick (Nov 14, 2009)

Ray said:


> Maybe I'm just reading this wrong before my coffee, but isn't that backwards?
> 
> .



Need your coffee Ray. Your understanding is just what I meant.

As you describe species get fine tuned to specific local requirments. And species segregate and compete to "be the best they can be" and take advantage of specific local conditons (which includes the nutrients). Subsequently if all orchids in the greenhouse turned out not to have a specific needs to do excelently on any given generic and fertilizer /trace nutrient mix, then you could conclude that either nutrients are not specific to a given local or are not important to defining the distribution of species. But in reality not all orchid species ( or even within paphs) do equally good on a single mix in one persons GH. Some do great, some do Ok, and some seem to be poor doers no matter what we do.

There are obviously a ton a variables in this subject. One that we don't often refer to is time. It is not unlikely that any two orchid species may have similar nutrient requirements over all, but different needs at different times. For example, the cycling and availability of Ca and Mg in tropical forest leaf litter vary independently over the course of the year and is usually associated with rainfail. So the timing of the monsoon events could suggest a Mg need for sukhakulii at a different time than for bullenianum (totally hypothetical), but both still need Mg.


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## Stone (May 19, 2013)

michelangelo said:


> was probably present at the right strength…).
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## ALToronto (May 20, 2013)

This issue of iron toxicity has me intrigued as well. K-Lite contains chelated iron - could it be too much for some plants?


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## Ray (May 21, 2013)

Anything's possible Alla, but its not a lot different from the MSU fertilizers from which it is derived, and I have not heard of any reorts of toxicity.

Thanks for resurrecting this thread, Mike. A good read...again.


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