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.

First, welcome to active participation!
It is worth taking a look at the objective that you're seeking, and then work backwards to the "how to achieve". Most orchids grow really slowly, so don't need much fertilizer - they're not making much new tissue. Catasetinae in their rapid growth phase (like now) are bulking up with lots of new tissue - leaves, new pseudobulbs, roots - extremely rapidly. So they need much more of everything - water, minerals, light. I use some time-release fertilizer to supplement what I give in liquid form, but that's because I don't fertilizer my collection all that often. In the late summer, when they have pretty much reached full size, fertilizer can be cut back a bit. Once leaves start to yellow in the fall indicating the approach of dormancy, fertilizer is reduced some more and eventually stopped. Water is reduced. When they drop leaves, stop. If they don't go dormant by late December or so, stop watering anyway to force the issue. Now, the exact timing will vary based on genus, and for hybrids based on the makup. Some are just now getting to the growth time - and may be late to go dormant as well. For me, Clowesias tend to get into gear first, then Catasetums, then Cycnoches, then Mormodes. (combinations fall somewhere in between... I just watch them and respond to what they seem to want) But that depends on the specific plant, too... just observe and respond as seems reasonable.

Great, thanks for the reply. I like to think I'm managing pretty well so far with them. I got the rules down, or at least I have them in mind. With your watering, in early summer, do you let them dry out at all? Or just keep then evenly moist and then soak them every few days?

I can experiment, but in my (limited and first season) experience with these guys, the "dryest" I let them get while in active growth is where the top feels just barely moist... For reference, my 'SVO Black Pearl' is just about 24" tall from the bottom of the pot to tallest leaf right now in a 3" pot. For reference, I've attached a photo from almost two weeks ago at this point and I only started watering this plant (slowly at first) sometime early / mid may, when it reached about 8-10" in height.

You can even sit them in a shallow pan with water. When they're in rapid growth, Fred Clarke says "Water like monsoon" since that is what they get in nature at the "growing" time of year. So it's pretty hard to overwater them when they're growing so fast. They should never dry out. (They come from an extremely seasonal climate - very heavy rain in spring and summer, none at all in winter) In fact, it's amazing to me that the pseudobulbs typcally don't shrivel, or at least not much, being without water for several months. But since they have no leaves at that point, there is little surface to transpire water. They're superbly adapted to their environmental extremes.

Mine don't dry out from the time they get watered for the first time after dormancy ends until around November when they start dropping leaves.

I grow them a little differently but according to the general rules….

Mine are outside and they get wet if it rains. Any time of year. They are covered but only by an eave and they still get wet. I don’t have real dormancy for a lot of these. I had several start this year’s growth with last years still having leaves.

I keep all of mine in trays that hold water and use mostly inorganic media so there is always water available

I have 15-20 of these and I am NO expert but they are a LOT of fun. The conventional wisdom is correct but they can behave a little differently in a humid and wet environment

Yep, the hard dormancy treatment isn't as critical (or even needed a lot of the time) for tropical areas. Makes me miss Hawaii! lol

Hey, thanks for all the replies. It's been about a week and I've rapidly increased watering from every 3-4 days to heavy watering every two days - the time it currently takes to see no water (drops / drips) sitting in the bottom of the pot - since I have them in clear pots, I can check that. In the short time since I've been doing that, I'm seeing the p-bulbs fatten up significantly and ironically, instead of the roots "slowing down" and not growing, I see the plants pushing root tips what seems to be even faster. The largest plant is still pushing new leaves and is already a full 24" from base of the pot to the top of the plant, I'd expect this guy to top out at something close to 26" at least at this rate before the leaves are done growing - I had no idea this variety got that big.

My only hope is that I wasn't short changing the plants development potential by keeping watering to every 3-4 days - I think I may have been, but I'm hopeful they'll catch up. They never dried out so there's that, but they sure seem to have bulked up fast in the past two weeks. Can't wait to see these things bloom, hoping for two spikes on the biggest one, but may be a bit two early for that kind of display with a plant of only 4 bulbs total (2 of them new growths, one of them a bit on the smaller side).

Glad it's working - when in active growth, this group of orchids is hungry and thirsty - and growing so fast that you can almost watch them get bigger.

In the tropics here ----- my currently flowering Fdk plant is grown in 100% scoria (10 to 15 mm average diameter)- grown in full (can get quite intense) sun, and it just gets weak fertiliser at the beginning of each month, and some weak mag-cal at the middle of each month.

And I just use a water hose ------ and dump the water into the scoria every morning.

The pot sits on a drainage grate --- just in case ----- just so that the pot never sits in water. I just use a drainage grate.

It can get quite windy sometimes ---- the big scoria pot it's in is heavy and relatively wide, and fairly low centre of gravity ------ pretty much no chance of it toppling over ----- unless there was a big cyclone or tornado heheh.

To really lift those chances for flower spike production ------ give the Fdk type plants as much sun as possible.

As for fertiliser ------ it is probably true that there the more fertiliser (up to a point that is) and more water can result in 'monster' size bulbs for some mature plants. Although - a plant doesn't need to be monster size in order to get nice flowers. They can be small to medium size, and yet very healthy, and will produce flowers.

It really is amazing to see how fast they grow and how fast the bulbs fatten up once they start getting watered!

Yeah, regarding flowering. I grow mine under lights, strong leds - they do seem to like the light, because as of right now, they are almost pressed up against the lights, which is crazy because any other orchid I have would ABSOLUTELY get leaf burn being that close to them. I've had higher light dendrobiums and cattleyas start turning purple at 2-3 times the distance the catasetums are from the lights. I once messed up and left a den. bullenianum up about a foot from the lights while changing things around and those leaves were burned in a matter of hours, I have a den. kingianum about 18" from the lights and it has some purple staining on the leaves indicating maximum light has been reached - I'd say the catasetums are maybe about 4-6" from the lights now for reference.

I'd assume the light level they are getting now is somewhere around the equivalent of 5000-6000 foot candles of outdoor peak sunlight, all things being equal (when factoring PAR/PPFD, the fact that light output / intensity is constant, photo period, etc.) So if light is what's needed, I should be good to go - here's to hoping!

I'll provide an update either way, though I have a few months to go before I think they're will be much to report.

I was just thinking the same thing yesterday when watering! I was surprised to see how much the old bulbs had plumped up and how quick the new growths are developing, and I started watering my Ctsm only about 10 days ago.

This year is my first to try Catasetum. Four SVO hybrids and a fibratum. I'm doing something like a PET system. Read up a TON this past fall/winter. They've already thrown me for my first loop. All started growing, I patiently awaited that "roots around 4" long" before watering.

All five of these buggers never showed any roots. All straight down into the top layer. So after a couple of months or so when the new growths were around 3-4" long, old pbulbs were looking pretty wrinkly, I shrugged my shoulders and put some water on them. Then a week later I gave them a monsoon treatment and threw some slow release fertilizer on top. They're growing... I haven't seen a root yet. Have no idea what I'm doing, as they aren't giving me the visuals I anticipated when reading.

My watering consensus is it's fortunate for me they seem to know what to do. I'm still just winging it and keeping their bottom reservoir full of water. :blushing:

---------- Post added at 08:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:13 AM ----------

And agree with DC... they ARE a lot of fun. Not sure why I haven't tried them before. I may be getting more and moving on from some that are higher maintenance. IF they don't all die from my lack of expertise and IF I get some blooms.

My first year anecdotal observations are that watering early is not as much of a death sentence as it is often sold as. There's even information floating out on the internet that the roots stop growing on contact with water or even die if watered too early. That has not been my observation AT ALL. The roots hae not stopped growing for one second, in fact they appear to be growing faster with the added watering and humidity - at a minimum they're growing the same as before.

Now granted, I did wait until I saw good root development before I watered my Fredclarkearas, but by the advice out there I could / should have probably waited longer.

EDIT: Being as I grow in a giant terrarium, I can control all of the factors. Air flow, temperature, light and humidity. I'm wondering if the "early watering issue" that some people encounter is more of an issue with both immature roots and the fact that watering early in the season also tends to coorespond with colder temperatures. In my playing around with factors, I've noticed that plants that typically like to be dry, can be kept almost soaking wet if the temps at the root zone are high enough. Who knows.

I keep meaning to create a time series where I photograph the plant each day after watering....but I keep forgetting! :blushing::blushing::blushing:

---------- Post added at 11:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:47 AM ----------

I bet there are a bunch of roots down there! Probably just emerged at a point on the new growth that is covered up by media!

Cold certainly has something to do with it!

However, complex hybrids like Fdk. you mentioned are basically bulletproof and don't respond negatively to early watering like many of the species do. Withholding water during dormancy works for the entire group and dramatically increases the success of the plants by preventing a lot of rot issues during winter, which is why it's recommended as a blanket statement for folks just starting out with this group. Many (most?) of the species (not the hybrids) have problems aborting roots when receiving water too early. I learned to grow this group in Hawaii and had problems with certain species aborting their roots with early watering.

As you can imagine, there are plenty of caveats to the blanket dry dormancy. For example, complex hybrids don't seem to respond negatively to a wet dormancy, though they also do just fine with a dry dormancy. Maintaining consistently warm temperatures (above 55F) also greatly reduces or eliminates problems commonly associated with wet dormancy. Also, some species (e.g. Ctsm. pileatum) get plenty of rain during their dormancy, which is often very short in the wild. Arthur Holst does a great job of discussing dormancy wetness (or dryness) for each species in his book. That said, while many species are ok with a wetter dormancy, some will absolutely not do well. However, they all do just fine with a dry dormancy.

As you can imagine, explaining the nuances or dormancy over and over and over and over again can be draining. Instead, it's just easier to say "don't water until the roots are 4 inches long" because it's a tried and true method of success, though certainly not the only path to success.

People like you are a gift to the orchid world Stephen :biggrin:

I wouldn't have been able to bloom Catasetum lanciferum without all the precious tips you give in your videos.

I'm glad to help and can't wait to see more photos of blooms!

Thanks for the replies, everyone. It's been another week and the increased watering / fertlizing seems to be paying dividends. I had no idea Fdk. After Dark got so big, it's just beginning to grow what I believe is it's terminal leaf and it's around 25"-26" tall from the bottom of the pot to the top of the tallest leaf tip - it could have grown taller, but t's literally pressed up against the top glass of my terrarium. The previous years bulb is about 5" tall if I had to guess, this years bulb is looking like 12-14" tall, it's hard to tell where the p-bulb tip ends (or if it's done growing upwards).

I have a couple of questions around this growth:

1.) With it only being July, is it likely this guy will enter early dormancy? If this plant has another two months of serious growth to do, I'm going to have to figure out a new place to put it. Also, it's getting pretty unwieldy being so large - I have to handle it very careully with two hands when I pull it off the shelf to water it.

2.) I have seen what I believe is the terminal leaf tip come out. Do the bulbs continue to grow wider / fatter, or - related to the first question - do you think it'll just stop growing soon? I'm not clear on if they grow up, then fatten or if they fatten as they grow, so far I see what looks like a mix of both.

You may need to find another place to put it... it still has some growing to do. (Even as the leaves reach their maximum length they continue to spread out) Is there a place where you can put it outside? In summer, it is very likely to be quite warm enough, the extra light is beneficial. Yes, Fdk. After Dark is a big plant. (Fred Clarke of SVO has been working on breeding smaller Catasetinae hybrids, there were some in the last few offerings of young plants, But this one is big)

Thanks for the heads up. It's crazy that it can get so big, as every plant / bulb I've ever found for sale (including the ones I bought) had the largest bulbs being no bigger than 6-8"... I guess they all just ship the smallest back bulbs for sale. I bought a few small mini-type catasetum from Fred Clarke at SVO this year, and I'm glad as I will always make room for Black Pearl as it's a current favorite of mine, but with the size of this guy, it's likely going to be an outdoor grower for at least a good portion of the year. The problem I have is I'll have to build a shade house to grow it, as I have 0 shade from trees in my yard and we often get high winds (no trees = no wind breaks and no shade).

What part of the country are you in?

I'm in Pennsylvania, zone 7b. I'm located at the top of a hill / ridge, so my yard gets full sun from sun up to sundown, no shade, no windbreaks. I grow huge tomato plants, corn, melons, asparagus, all of which I attribute to those things, but I've never figured any orchid could handle it.

If the Fdk orchids are eased into full sun ----- assuming that they weren't growing in full sun to begin with ------- then Fdk orchids (eg. After Dark 'SVO Black Pearl') can handle full sun ...... not just handle it ...... but handle it easily.

I suspect your plant would do just fine in full sun at your latitude, with the right acclimation. You could even put it on the east side of the house where it could get some afternoon shade.

Mopwr... what a horrible position you're in! A plant that's growing so strong and fast ya don't know what to do! Hope a couple of mine give me that issue... :biggrin:

Ha, I'm both happy it's doing so well, and rapidly running out of space. When I built my DIY "orchidarium", I remember thinking how huge it looked in the room and how empty it was. Now, it seems small and my catasetums are bursting out at the seams.

For reference, the terrarium I used is 36" wide, 18" deep and 36" tall.

have you thought about planting a tree or two? i know you can get some BEAST diciduous trees up three and a good break of evergreens could help with wind too

just a thought

also a partial wall with a pergola coming off of it would be a solution. put the wall flat to the prevailing wind's direction

Yup... time for a second DIY. :biggrin:

also, really nice grow space-

the perfection of well grown indoor plants is amazing to me!

In summer, I put my Catasetinae outside on west-facing shelves with 50% shade cloth just to take the "edge" off the blazing afternoon sun. They seem to totally love the high light. (Protected from the toasting noonday direct sun, but still really bright)

I'd probably try almost full sun here if it didn't get so hot in the afternoon, at least during normal summers.

Yeah, today even though I'm in the northeast, we hit around 94 - I had a plant in the windowsill in a clear pot that I needed to pull away as I felt like the pot was cooking the roots.

My biggest concern is shielding them from the extremes. When I say we get wind here, we get some serious wind from time to time. I have everything we care about nailed down and bungy corded. I thought about building a small sheltered area for growing plants, and if I can reliably grow these guys outside I may just do that. I'm betting I could acclimate them slowly to the sun, but with how top heavy the plants are now. There's no way I wouldn't be picking them up off the ground twice a week in the summer (thunderstorms are brutal).

For next year when you repot, consider terracotta pots - for the weight. Even now, you can drop them, pot and all, into terracotta pots, again for the weight. You'll also get some root cooling from evaporation of water.

I put mine outside in the spring when the new growth is big enough to water and night temps are above about 55 deg. F. Then, they get brought into the GH in the fall when the nights get down to that level again. (There's usually a month or 6 weeks of serious crowding, because they still have their huge leaves at that point, but fairly soon dormancy starts and alleviates the crunch)

Another week down things seem to be going good. Just a general question, and I can't seem to find anything on this online or even on the forums (a couple of quick searches). For catasetum types, do they grow tall, stop growing up at the terminal leaf, then spend the rest of the season getting wider (leaves and p-bulbs)? It seems like at least two of my catasetum types have topped out, but are still drinking a good amount - so I'm assuming (without measuring) that all that water / fertilizer is just to fatten the bulbs now.

I have a Clowesia that's grown fairly tall, but is fairly skinny overall - I'm assuming that once it reaches it's terminal height (whatever that is) that it will focus on fattening up? Is that correct?

Yes, they'll spend some time fattening up. The Clowesia bulbs should end up short and fat or tall and fat, depending on the species.

A little update, things are still growing - and I know these are supposed to be big, but everyday I see this thing and am just shocked.

My largest Fredclarkeara topped over 24" and then started to lean a bit, so it's a bit harder to know how "tall" it actually would be, had it kept growing straight up. The bulb just seems huge, like it's going to burst. The bulb measured from base to tip is around 12.5" and is almost 2.5" across at the widest, but it's so plump it's basically round like a cylinder (the previous years growths were a bit flat-ish). One of the pictures I took with my hand curled loosely around it just to give some perspective; and my hands are by no means small and dainty.

Last years bulb (the one I purchased it with) was not even five inches long and just a little over an inch wide, you can see it poking out of the pot in the background in one of the photos and see how ridiculously small it looks by comparison. The second growth it sprouted (about a month after the first) is much larger than the bulb it grew from, but as you can see is microscopic compared to the lead growth.

My next largest plant is only mildly off from this one to be honest. I expected that maybe I might have bulbs this big in a few years, but not right off the bat starting from 3" and 4" bulb divisions.

Regarding the original purpose of this thread, as you can see, I nested the original pot inside a soup container so I can keep a resovoir water in there - following the advice I was given here - and they are doing very well with that. The water level in that container drops about a 1/4"-3/8" a day, every day... Funny observation about that, the level will sit basically unchanged all day, but then drop fast overnight - which I think runs counter to what I'd expect biology-wise, but it's pretty entertaining to watch and keep up with.

Nice growing! When the growing conditions are very nice and suitable for these orchids ------ they can potentially become relatively large ----- and examples of the large ones will be seen online (forum pics, youtube etc).

Wow mopowr!! That’s so exciting, and coming from that little pot!! I got GOALS! Not getting there yet, but sure want to. :bowing:

Nope, that’s what you’d expect from this group! The CAM plants do a lot of their chemistry at night, with the stomata closed during the day. The stomata open at night and water is released, so it makes sense they’re using lots of water over night. Understanding their biology is very helpful to growing Catasetums and orchids in general.