Catasetum Watering Consensus
First post, long time reader... Was looking for a while for some information on the topic of "how much water" and how frequently to water - and I found a lot of info... I even asked Fred Clarke and got his advice, but I think - as with everyone - my growing conditions are different, and I'm just not feeling like what I'm hearing seems to line up with what the plants are telling me.
Most questions revolve around when to water, when to fertilize and when to stop either of those things (or if you should ever completely stop). My question is how much should I be watering at this point. My plants are growing well (two Fdk. After Dark 'SVO Black Pearl', one Cycnodes Wine Delight, one Clowesia Jumbo Grace 'Alba'), but I feel like I should be fertilizing them more / watering them more based on what I read.
My growing conditions are that I grow completely indoors in a fairly large wardian case I built to control all aspects of their growing (temperature, light, air circulation, and humidity). I can set daytime temperature to whatever I want, nighttime drops to the high 60s (it's in my basement), there are good strong led grow lights that I can dim, as needed, and the humidity control is simply a matter of venting the enclosure with fans. My conditions are exactly this (right now): 86 day / 68 night, humidity a fairly constant 75%, and the light each plant gets varies by how close it is to the lights (which I have pretty much dialed in at this point).
Ok, now that all the background out of the way, so the question is this:
I've read some water / fertilize multiple times a week, I've seen some guidance where the plants should dry out slightly between watering (heard this from Fred Clarke too), but at the rate my plants are "drying out", I'd only water once a week tops. How often should I really be watering?
I'm betting if the plants were outdoors they'd dry a lot faster, but I'm not setup for growing outside (no trees / no shade / high winds most days which would toss plants around). When I held off watering till they dried on the top slightly, they did ok, but they seemed to be growing faster when I just watered every three days instead of waiting 5 or more to get them to dry a bit more.
On a related note, my Cloweisa is growing, but still seems to barely be drinking -do they start off or move slower? To be fair I just started watering it and it's not as far along as the Fdks or the Cycnodes.
|