What to do when your orchid blooms?

Keep doing what you've been doing. This includes fertilizer -- I hear a lot of people say they've been told not to feed their orchids while they're blooming, but flowering takes energy! And enjoy! Kenni

Hi everybody. I think there're many old hands on this 4rum. Therefore, please let m know if I was wrong.

- Fertilizers with high Nitrogen concentration such as 30:10:10 ca promote growing but inhibit flowering. Generally, people stops thi kind of fertilizers and replaces with high Potassium concentratio fertilizer (to elongate flower life span).

- Flower cell structure contain mostly water (in layman term, itn't a stable as the leaf instead of their same origin), so you may keep it i protected greenhouse to advoid insect (both disease vector an pollinator are need to be advoided if you want to keep it longer).

- When watering, advoid watering directly on the flower. Good luck. PS: I think you can find many flower elongate agent at the agricultur eqquipment shops. (If you can find Benzylaminopurin, it's so cool

Hey Wendy,

I live in Tasmania, Australia so it's not the warmest of climates. I keep the orchids outside in a garden bed so they surrounded with other plants, it keeps the wind from being a problem and also protects them from too much sun.

I generally water them weekly spring through summer and monthly the rest of the year (unless it rains, then I take that into account)

Feeding is about the same as watering however I do tend to forget to do it but it's never been a problem!

Thanks for the info Miss Taz, You are really down under! Tasmania the chunk that broke away from Australia, at least it looks that way on a map & it looks lovely & green. I really need to concentrate on feeding my cymbidiums a bit more especially to promote blooming. Would love to see some pics of your place. (Have you looked at alt.binaries.pictures.orchids) Cheers Wendy