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HI Guys, welcome back to my channel. In today's video we are going to be talking about
fertilizing Cymbidiums. Being it is summer time, we are going to talk
about fertilizing Cymbidiums in the summer to get best growth you can, to them prepared
for the fall when they start putting up spikes. what we are going to do first is mix up some
fertilizer, so this one here is a 25-10-10. now the reason we want the 25-10-10 is the
first number is nitrogen. This is N-P-K , so the nitrogen in the summer time is going to
be very important for Cymbidium growth. Nitrogen is going to give the energy to anything green
and being Cymbidiums are putting up lots of foliage, we are going to want a high nitrogen
fertilizer for them for the summer time. So, what we are going to want to do is start with
some fresh water and mix that up appropriately, I like to mix a mixture of about 200ppm. I
have the luxury of having a total dissolved solids meter, which looks like this here.
so im going to be able to see exactly how much fertilizer is in my water. For you guys,
you will probably just want to follow the directions on the fertilizer package and the
actually cut that in half. This one here for example is a half of teaspoon per gallon,
so I would start with a quarter teaspoon per gallon because you really don't know how strong
it is going to be. Cymbidiums and other Orchids, their roots can burn very easy.
All right we are back, so we have water in front of us, we have some Orchid fertilizer,
probably should have clean theat out a little bit before grabing the water but it really
doesn't mater. It's my greenhouse watering thing.
So this is the TDS meter, take off the cap, turn it on. it has a reading of zero ppm.
we will stick it in here, this is the before. 35,34,31, so it is settling at 30 ppm, which is relatively soft,
not to much of anything desolved in there, probably just going to be a little bit of
calcium. Now we will take our orchid fertilizer and
being our goal is 200ppm, we are going to start with a little tiny bit. now this is
a table spoon so im just using the littlest bit in there.
give that a stir, now ill see what it is up to, so that brought it up to 142, 135, 139
so im going to put a little bit more in there, just a tiny bit. Now it doesnt have to be
an exact amount. that is close enough, we are at 236 -237ppm.
now remember I started at 30ppm total desolved solids, so I have about 200ppm of fertilizer.
And that is how I mix up the fertilizer for my Cymbidiums,
now i'll replace the caps on everything. The fogger has turned on now so it is kind
of a little bit fogy in here. If you watch any of my other videos you know
there is a fogging system in the greehouse, hopefully that doesnt effect us over on this
side of the greenhouse. If you see a little bit of fog, that's why.
so now lets head out and give the Cymbidiums a good fertilizing.
Alright so, Im going to give each one of these Cymbidiums about a cup of fertilized water.
I did water these earlier today so the media is a little bit damp. You never want to fertilize
an Orchid that is bone dry, the orchid roots will suck up to much of the salts and the
orchid bark sucks up quite a bit of salt as well.
so I'll just go through and finish this off.maybe a little bit of the water is trickling out
the bottom, but not much. Alright so there we go, start to finish, that's
how I quickly fertilize my Cymbidiums and remember this is a summer time regime so in
the winter we will switch up the fertilizer a little bit but for now we used the 25-10-10.
I hope you learn something on this video, if you liked this video make sure to hit the
like button and if you want to so more videos like this please subscribe to my channel,
Thanks for watching.