Role of Orchids Fertilizer to Orchid Health
Feeding your orchids the correct food is the key to having a healthy plant with plenty of blooms. In nature, orchids are fed, literally, by what falls from the heavens. Rain pours down on them from the trees above and carries dead leaves, minerals, decomposing animal matter, and other things onto the plant.
What do Orchids Need?
They need nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and some trace elements to thrive. Potassium helps with flower development. Phosphorous helps with the actual production of the flower, and nitrogen encourages healthy foliage growth. The amount of fertilizer and the amount of these elements in the fertilizer that you use depends on the time of year and the health of the plant.
In your home, orchids cannot live on water alone. And they can’t live on potting medium either because the necessary potting medium for these plants contains very few nutrients. The potting medium is more to offer support to the plant than for anything else. Whatever medium you have potted your plants in will dictate the type of fertilizer needed. If they are in bark, the nutrient mixture must be high nitrogen (such as 30-10-10). Almost every other medium dictates a more balanced food (like 18-18-18).
Homemade or Commercial?
Mixing commercial fertilizer with some homemade and with items scavenged around the home is a good idea. You can make your own fertilizer out of cow manure or fish parts and seaweed. There are many items you will have around your home that are good for orchids. These might include:
• Eggshells for calcium – crush them into powder
• Tea bags – are high in nitrogen. Open the bags and sprinkle away
• Milk – high in calcium and protein. Put a little water in an empty milk container, shake and pour.
• Potatoes – grate small (including skin), boil and store in jars.
• Molasses – a good source of potassium. A teaspoon of molasses added to fertilizer works wonders.
• Epsom salts – for magnesium
• Bananas, mashed – for potassium
• Crushed bones – for potassium and calcium
Regular Houseplant Fertilizer?
Are regular houseplant fertilizers okay? It really depends on their composition. Check out the numbers on the containers and you’ll be able to tell if that particular formula contains enough of the nutrients that orchids need. Some growers also use several different fertilizers, switching every time they water.
The idea here is that with a variety of different foods, surely the plants will get all that they need as they’re fed often. Unless you have a truly fabulous collection of rare plants, in which case you’d want to be very careful about what you fed them, you should do fine with this rotating schedule.
Weakly Weekly?
When it comes to how to use fertilizer on your plants the general consensus is to feed weekly weakly – use a weak solution and use it every week. These plants don’t need as much food as most houseplants. A weak solution would be approximately one-quarter the strength of an average solution. Every once in a while, just flush the plants with water that does not contain plant food.
Salts can build up in a pot and in medium and this is not good for roots. Really drenching with plain water will flush out extra salts and too much fertilizer. In the winter feed your orchids less often – maybe every few weeks. The heaviest feeding times should be spring and summer. Also, remember that plants in low light need less fertilizer than plants living with more light.
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