K-lite fertilizer

[cnycharles]

I'd be interested in trying, but I think the phosphorus level is too low

 

[Stone]

Needless to say for the SH crowd, if you consider all the species that grow on limestone rock, they get almost no K in their diet either, and this diet should do great for SH too.

??? Almost no K? I just cant see it.

I have lots of mounted plants (bark plaques) granted not totally inert like clay pellets, but close to SH with regards to root exposure and they have also improved greatly. I do have 5 phrags in SH. I recently posted the Phrag caricinum pics. There hasn't been a huge increase in growth size, but rate of new growth is as good as ever, and frequency/severity of erwinia has declined significantly.

I also have lots of mounted stuff and I've been using straight hyro. fertilizer which by all accounts looks like your MSU but maybe with higher K for 5 years. I have never had any of the problems you speak of. In fact I'm seeing better results than before.

What I have been trying to convey is the fact that the enviroment you create around your plants (temp air light water humidity air for roots etc.) has infinately more influence on your ultimate results than the composition of your fertilizer. For instance, If you planted 2 identical orchids, using the same p/mix, one in a pot and one in a basket, used a low K feed in the pot and ''regular'' feed for the other, which plant would perform better?

The same goes for air, water, heat etc etc. Thats all I'm trying to say. Why do we go to so much effort and expence to create the right enviroment?
Because we are trying to replictate NATURE( Lance::wink

Rick, I just put a delenatii seedling into a basket ( you're really on to something here ) have been feeding it with 1/4 of the normal K. Within 2 days and only watering ( no exaggeration ), it put out 3 new root tips. That can't be a coinsidence because I keep a close eye on them and while in small pots they normally put out 1 at a time and slowly at that. I'm thinking its the greater air flow senced by the plant. The rapidity of the response was amazing.
Environment once again. You're probably thinking I'm seeing things.
Yesterday I did the same with venustum, gratrix., malipoense, suk.
We will see what happens.

Mike

 

[Stone]

This was maybe the number one reason I got started on this research in the first place.

Number 2 would be all the plants that I grew great for 3 years to just go into burnout after that.

I really can appreciate the old expression "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". But after 10 years of growing I saw plenty that was obviously broken (at least by my standards).

Also if you go through a lot of the anti CITES threads were Roth points out the rather dismally high mortality rate of propagated seedlings and adult plants going into the world wide market, you could also come up with the notion that it was not just me having the problems.

We can't replicate nature in the GH, but there's no reason we can't learn from it and apply it to our culture programs.

I don't think we necessarily have to give up on faster/better. If you saw my post on my venustum seedling, that plant achieved blooming less than 2 years out of flask. More than half of that time it was in a basket and going to low K fertilizing. It's only one plant, (so not statistically significant), but it's apparent that what I was doing didn't kill it.

I also recently posted some pics of mastersianum seedlings growing at what I think is an impressive rate. These are typically poor doers for a lot of people and would be included on Roth's list of seedlings never making it to market list.

I really don't care, if these guys beat all FCC records, but they sure don't seem to be suffering for what I'm putting them through either.

You're Quoting me on something I didn't say

 

[Rick]

I also have lots of mounted stuff and I've been using straight hyro. fertilizer which by all accounts looks like your MSU but maybe with higher K for 5 years. I have never had any of the problems you speak of. In fact I'm seeing better results than before.


Mike

I spent my first 5 years focusing on the environmental factors and did see big gains in maintaining high humidity, good airflow, and controlled temps. About 7 years ago you could go back through my posts and find my humidity epiphany. I always considered my mounted stuff to be doing pretty good (which is one of the reasons I started putting paphs in baskets). Rare losses. But keep in mind that folks (including myself) rarely start orchids out on mounts (and larger plants are harder to OD).
However, the gains in my mounted plants in just the last half year or so by cutting the K really have put a lot of my earlier results to shame.

Weren't you just complaining about having problems with an Oncidium lanceanum?

 

[Rick]

You're Quoting me on something I didn't say

Sorry Quotes of Quotes. Should be fixed now.

 

[Rick]

Rick, I just put a delenatii seedling into a basket ( you're really on to something here ) have been feeding it with 1/4 of the normal K. Within 2 days and only watering ( no exaggeration ), it put out 3 new root tips.

Mike

But you did 2 things at once. basket AND low feed.

When I first started the basket thing, yes I saw some very fast responses. But after a few couple months some things started slowing down. That's when I started cutting K. Everything in baskets sped back up AND both mounted plants, and the plants left in pots also took off.

I've been trying to grow live moss in the pots and baskets. In general it does poorly under high feed conditions, and won't compete with algaes. But they are faster responding than orchids, so in some ways I can get a faster read on the system by watching the moss growth.

 

[Rick]

For instance, If you planted 2 identical orchids, using the same p/mix, one in a pot and one in a basket, used a low K feed in the pot and ''regular'' feed for the other, which plant would perform better?

Mike

The low K mix would do better.

I have been doing a couple of comparisons of baskets vs pots both using the same moss/gravel/sand mix. I also left splits of some of my paphs in standard bark potting mixes in pots.

The trials were started when everything got the standard MSU. Initially all the baskets really took off, the pots with moss went down hill, the plants untouched in bark stayed the same. Then when I cut K all 3 types took off regardless of potting system.

I think the basket aeration is very helpful, but fresh moss is like fresh bark is like fresh CHC. It's low in K but will suck up a bunch of K quickly without lots of Ca/Mg available. Once the substrate is full of K then you might as well be using a 12-5-75 fertilizer. I think this is a primary reason why I think my mounted stuff always held up so much better than potted stuff. No substrate to get saturated with K.

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

I am now trying a low P/low K approach. I'm now using a 50:50 MSU:CaNO3 ratio most feedings, alternating with straight CaNO3....and every now and then MgSO4. Too soon to see if this is an improvement over MSU. To be honest, its would probably take me at least a year, really more, to see if lowP/K is really that much better for my plants. (I'm willing to try, as I figure experimenting with lower nutrients is way better than experimenting with more.) While I'd be willing to go in on the mix Ray said he could get, 5 lbs is way more than I can use...a lb of MSU alone lasts me a at least 2 years...probably 3-4.

 

[Rick]

I am now trying a low P/low K approach. I'm now using a 50:50 MSU:CaNO3 ratio most feedings, alternating with straight CaNO3....and every now and then MgSO4. Too soon to see if this is an improvement over MSU. To be honest, its would probably take me at least a year, really more, to see if lowP/K is really that much better for my plants. (I'm willing to try, as I figure experimenting with lower nutrients is way better than experimenting with more.)

Eric Your experiences with emersonii dying after blooming is another data point in the pile that got me started on this.

If you haven't sworn off them entirely you might give them at try again with this method.

I only have one that I have been playing with for about 7 years (from seedling). It's darker and bigger than ever with leaves thick as shoe leather (and in bract). But it add 2 growths (for total of 4 now) just this past summer.

You also had similar problems as me with barbata types dying in CHC, I'm retrying some colosum seedlings in CHC. It may take a year to prove otherwise as you said, but so far so good.

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

I'll never give up on emersonii! I currently have 2...one has literally not changed a bit in the 2 or more years I have had it. No growth at all. Leaves are still hard. I repotted it a few weeks ago....a lot of root loss, but still several live roots. the other is a seedling I got from Tom Kalina....its doing well, and actively growing. Unfortunately, its actively growing at an emersonii pace. Most barbata's are doing well now, but I'll never go back to CHC for them. I've now used Orchiata bark for maybe 2 years, and I'm happy. My big mistake with CHC was switching everything over to it when I first started to see success. Paphs love being repotted into CHC...initial growth is great. But after a few months, the lower roots all die and foliage yellows. CHC would probably still be good if I was willing to repot 2-3 times a year. I have high hopes that you are right about everything.

 

[keithrs]

I have high hopes that you are right about everything.

We all do!!!!oke:

 

[Ray]

Rick - Minimum quantity is one bag of 25# - won't know the cost until a formula is used to develop the ingredients.

Keith - Greencare is used to producing fertilizers for folks that use full bags or even pallets at a time, so homogeneity of the mix is not critical. Whenever I repackage the stuff, I try to dry blend it first. No matter what, folks really should use a larger volume of the powder blend to make a stock solution, as that will tend to be more representative of the overall formula, and then cut it down for use.

Charles - If you consider that phosphorus is taken up as much as possible, with excess stored in the vacuoles, I doubt that will be an issue. Frankly, I am more concerned that the low-K might have a negative effect upon water management and overall plant turgidity, as that's pretty much what controls it.

 

[Rick]

Rick - Minimum quantity is one bag of 25# - won't know the cost until a formula is used to develop the ingredients.

Charles - If you consider that phosphorus is taken up as much as possible, with excess stored in the vacuoles, I doubt that will be an issue. Frankly, I am more concerned that the low-K might have a negative effect upon water management and overall plant turgidity, as that's pretty much what controls it.

So if we get 5 takers to commit to 5 lbs you would be in good shape Ray? Once a super concentrate is made up, what do you think the shelf life would be?

The bromiliad paper I have indicated that K storing vacuoles occur in epiphytic species too (probably in all plants, but I haven't followed up to find that definitive info). So the logic for K is the logic for P. A constant dose of 1 mg/L K is still more than most orchids experience in the wild. It's still an excess quantity. If this product feeds at 125 mg/L N then the K should be 12.5 mg/L (- 20% since Potash). It's very rare to find a surface water (especially a headwater stream) with K over 3-4 ppm. Since headwater streams are where you see all drainage of rainwater percolating through forest leaf litter, and geologic seepage that's pretty much as good as its going to get for the plants in a given area as soluble K. For seepage water traveling over limestone rock, K is generally much lower than 1 ppm. This is why I think our calcerious orchid friends my be so much more sensitive to K overdose. But in all cases soluble Ca and Mg are many times higher than K concentrations.

I think we'll be alright.

 

[keithrs]

Keith - Greencare is used to producing fertilizers for folks that use full bags or even pallets at a time, so homogeneity of the mix is not critical. Whenever I repackage the stuff, I try to dry blend it first. No matter what, folks really should use a larger volume of the powder blend to make a stock solution, as that will tend to be more representative of the overall formula, and then cut it down for use.

Thats good to know Ray.....

 

[likespaphs]

i could probably be convinced to get some too

 

[SlipperKing]

Count me in too Ray/Rick

 

[cnycharles]

One of the things that makes me wonder about the phosphorus being too low, is someone's research that showed that high p (for certain paphs) made them much happier? Also I think they were giving them mancozeb for manganese...

if it were just certain plants and situations that needed more p, then I guess some bloom booster once in a while for them would help. there won't be any perfect one fertilizer, but if k is a 'limiting' factor in most cases trying this out seems to be a good idea

 

[gonewild]

Quote:
Originally Posted by gonewild View Post

This was maybe the number one reason I got started on this research in the first place.

Number 2 would be all the plants that I grew great for 3 years to just go into burnout after that.

I really can appreciate the old expression "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". But after 10 years of growing I saw plenty that was obviously broken (at least by my standards).

Also if you go through a lot of the anti CITES threads were Roth points out the rather dismally high mortality rate of propagated seedlings and adult plants going into the world wide market, you could also come up with the notion that it was not just me having the problems.

We can't replicate nature in the GH, but there's no reason we can't learn from it and apply it to our culture programs.

I don't think we necessarily have to give up on faster/better. If you saw my post on my venustum seedling, that plant achieved blooming less than 2 years out of flask. More than half of that time it was in a basket and going to low K fertilizing. It's only one plant, (so not statistically significant), but it's apparent that what I was doing didn't kill it.

I also recently posted some pics of mastersianum seedlings growing at what I think is an impressive rate. These are typically poor doers for a lot of people and would be included on Roth's list of seedlings never making it to market list.

I really don't care, if these guys beat all FCC records, but they sure don't seem to be suffering for what I'm putting them through either.

You're Quoting me on something I didn't say

I did not write that so I don't know what you are referring to.

 

[Ray]

OK, the request for "something akin to 10-1-1-5Ca-2Mg, with the trace elements along the lines of the 'Orchid Specials'" has been sent to Bill.

 

[gonewild]

One of the things that makes me wonder about the phosphorus being too low, is someone's research that showed that high p (for certain paphs) made them much happier? Also I think they were giving them mancozeb for manganese...

if it were just certain plants and situations that needed more p, then I guess some bloom booster once in a while for them would help. there won't be any perfect one fertilizer, but if k is a 'limiting' factor in most cases trying this out seems to be a good idea

It is real easy to add extra phosphorous with a few drops of Phosphoric acid.
Here is one possible source: Phosphoric Acid