Wednesday, August 2, 2017

PROPER ORCHID WATERING

How to Water Orchid Properly

Watering your orchid is one of the critical task when caring for orchids aside from providing sufficient light and adequate amount of nutrition. Proper watering will ensure you to get the utmost of your orchid which will eventually provide you with stunning flowers. Either too much water or too small amount of water will harm your orchid very much. 

Similar to any other plant, orchids also need proper growing conditions to be able to live and thrive healthy. The task of providing your orchid the proper growing conditions includes to giving your orchid the right amount of water. The requirement for each and every orchid for water can vary between one and another. So, it will be very important to be sure in the first place about the orchid type or species you are caring for.  
 
The majority of orchids are native to tropical areas of the world. Tropical areas are characterized with plenty of rain and high humidity where orchids get used to an ideal level of humidity around 80%. Such high humidity level will definitely not be comfortable for the majority of human beings. Thus you have to figure it out on how to provide a comfortable environment for your orchids while being kept in rooms or houses.  

An easy and smart way to humidify an orchid plant is providing them with regular water supply. You can purchase and make use of a deep bowl and some small rocks. Place the small rocks into the bowl. Then you should place your orchid pot on top of the small rocks within the bowl and then pour in water into the bowl.  Keep the water level away from the bottom of your orchid pot. You have to make sure that the water level will never touch the orchid pot. This will create an artificial high-humidity environment around your orchids.

As mentioned earlier, over watering your orchid will be fatal. This is probably the biggest mistake of watering an orchid, although this is not done by intention but merely due to lack of understanding about some condition, including the knowledge about the orchid type. It happens very often, using the common logic if a potting media looks dry then watering is needed. But this is not the case for orchids. We have to be aware about the fact that although a bark looks dry, but it still holds some moisture inside.  

There is a simple rule of thumb to follow. Just water your orchid once in a week or once in a fortnight, with modest amount of water. Again, never overdo it. If you care for an orchid in your house, you should make sure that the barks in the pot are totally dry prior to watering. You might keep some orchid species on trees or branches. In this case you should examine their roots prior to watering. If they are totally dry, then proceed with the watering.

You may as well make use of a fertilizer, especially if you want to get amazing flowers. You have the option to purchase it at a gardening store or you can make them yourself using used kitchen stuff like eggshells, dried and crushed chicken bones, milk leftovers, etc. But you need to use the fertilizers sparingly, since most of the orchids can thrive healthy without any fertilizer


However providing good routines for watering plus fertilizing your orchid is a sort of guarantee to be able to see orchid grow healthy and produces amazing flowers. Just remember that water orchid and fertilizing are parts of a total good care for your orchid. Other means like providing sufficient amount of sunlight, changing the potting media regularly and repotting your orchid when needed are also parts of caring for orchids the right way.