Calvin asked me this. I was a little embarrassed cuz he’s grown orchids for huge amounts of time more than me. His sense of humor is wry, dry, and sly so I wondered for a minute if he was yanking my chain? Whatever. I took his question at face value and it’s something to ponder over anyway. What might the benefits of dunking be?
Well the accepted canon is never, ever dunk more than one orchid in the same water. Diseases will spread this way. I don’t know. It sounds to me like more of a greenhouse problem. Outdoors there seems to be so much more latitude and complexity of environments. But I could be wrong. My cocky attitude may backfire one day when a dunk-borne virus wipes out my whole orchid patch. But still I admit. I’ve been doing a lot of dunking.
Janet encouraged me to start letting compost sit in water and feed that to the orchids. It’s not as easy as it seems because the water is way smelly and clogs up my sprayer. So I had no choice but to dunk in the smelly miasmic liquid that came out of the garbage pail Jose convinced me to buy for the purpose. Over the past few weeks my recipe has changed to more sea grass, more seaweed, and less kitchen compost so the smell has gotten under control. More comfortably barn-like. And a lot less flies.
So I have been dunking whoever is living in a slatted basket. They get a good long soak, a minute or two, and then I hang them back up in the orchid grotto, careful to dodge the dripping garbage water. Everyone who’s had this treatment has shown a lot of progress except for, notably, Maxillaria arachnitiflora, who had a lot of leaves turn yellow, brown, and go away. She came back quite nicely though when I stopped the treatment.
For the rest it’s been misting, usually with a weak fertilizer mixture and a spoonful of Epsom salts. I wish I could extend my dunking experiment because I think that garbage water is a potent force for good. Better in some ways than misting. And in spite of the smell I do like that it’s all natural and not petrochemical based. But like I say maybe it will backfire one day and make me happy I kept to the misting. We’ll see!
Well the accepted canon is never, ever dunk more than one orchid in the same water. Diseases will spread this way. I don’t know. It sounds to me like more of a greenhouse problem. Outdoors there seems to be so much more latitude and complexity of environments. But I could be wrong. My cocky attitude may backfire one day when a dunk-borne virus wipes out my whole orchid patch. But still I admit. I’ve been doing a lot of dunking.
Janet encouraged me to start letting compost sit in water and feed that to the orchids. It’s not as easy as it seems because the water is way smelly and clogs up my sprayer. So I had no choice but to dunk in the smelly miasmic liquid that came out of the garbage pail Jose convinced me to buy for the purpose. Over the past few weeks my recipe has changed to more sea grass, more seaweed, and less kitchen compost so the smell has gotten under control. More comfortably barn-like. And a lot less flies.
So I have been dunking whoever is living in a slatted basket. They get a good long soak, a minute or two, and then I hang them back up in the orchid grotto, careful to dodge the dripping garbage water. Everyone who’s had this treatment has shown a lot of progress except for, notably, Maxillaria arachnitiflora, who had a lot of leaves turn yellow, brown, and go away. She came back quite nicely though when I stopped the treatment.
For the rest it’s been misting, usually with a weak fertilizer mixture and a spoonful of Epsom salts. I wish I could extend my dunking experiment because I think that garbage water is a potent force for good. Better in some ways than misting. And in spite of the smell I do like that it’s all natural and not petrochemical based. But like I say maybe it will backfire one day and make me happy I kept to the misting. We’ll see!
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