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The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Fertilizing Orchids the Right Way

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.81.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2023

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fertilizing can be confusing! Today we learn how often to fertilize orchids, what kind of fertilizers to use, and common mistakes people make when fertilizing. Spoiler alert: don’t give them too much fertilizer! Connect with John Clements: John Clements has been a horticultural professional for 46 years. Former nursery owner, gardener and koi pond builder to the rich and famous, horticulturist, commercial fruit tree farmer, garden writer, agricultural historian, co-administrator of the San Diego Gardener Facebook group, and the icing on the cake, is Director of Gardens at the 37-acre San Diego Botanic Garden. LinkedIn Website Instagram Buy Birdies Garden Beds Use code EPICPODCAST for 5% off your first order of Birdies metal raised garden beds, the best metal raised beds in the world. They last 5-10x longer than wooden beds, come in multiple heights and dimensions, and look absolutely amazing. Click here to shop Birdies Garden Beds Buy My Book My book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, is a beginners guide to growing food in small spaces, covering 6 different methods and offering rock-solid fundamental gardening knowledge: Order on Amazon Order a signed copy Follow Epic Gardening YouTube Instagram Pinterest Facebook Facebook Group Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

If fertilizing is a confusing topic for you, certainly was for me when I started, granted

0:15.8

I was growing hydroponically, so you really had to have your fertilizer on lockdown.

0:20.2

What we have, John, climates back on the show, the director of gardens at the San Diego

0:24.8

Botanic Garden.

0:25.8

I know John, we've talked about a little bit of fertilizer tips here on the show this

0:29.4

week, the weekly, weekly idea, but why don't we zoom back out and kind of give an overview

0:35.2

much like we did in our conversation about water?

0:38.3

Sure.

0:39.3

Well, fertilizing for everything in your garden is very important, but particularly for

0:44.5

orchids, you know, they can't get up and walk around and go find their own food.

0:49.8

So they depend 100% on us to bring them what they need.

0:54.7

And so there's also, in the media that orchids are growing in, there's absolutely nothing

1:00.8

there.

1:01.8

It's a completely non-broken down type of substrate.

1:07.8

And so it hasn't really been available as a nutrient.

1:12.0

It's basically just a sterile mix.

1:14.2

So it's really important to get them the food they want.

1:16.8

So one of the things that I'd like to really familiarize people with is that if you look

1:22.5

at a bag of fertilizer or a gallon container, whatever it is you're shopping for, there

1:28.2

are three numbers and you really need to know those three numbers when it comes to fertilizer.

1:33.5

The first number is for nitrogen and the second number is for phosphorus and then the third

1:40.4

number is for potassium or potash.

...

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