Orchids hunt for nutrients from anything and everything around them ranging from decomposing leaves, minerals borne in rainwater, down to animal/bird droppings. Orchid fertilizers stand for extra nutrients that may be delivered to the orchid plants in a number of ways; these can provide valuable help to get your orchid blooming brighter and sooner.

Are Orchid fertilizers and Orchid Foods One and the same?

Orchid plants use water, CO2, and sunlight for synthesizing their own food, but you can also provide additional nutrients such as potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorous to stimulate faster growth. Therefore, Orchid fertilizers essentially refer to a set of micro and macro elements used for making the orchid flower bloom, and remain healthy all the time.

The key is that high nitrogen concentrations don’t help in flowering but rather in foliage growth; so they’re good for helping the new shoots to come up. However, potassium and phosphorus play the most crucial role in flower development.

Commercial Orchid Fertilizers

As mentioned earlier, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are the major constituents of orchid fertilizers; hence the commercial ones are listed as numeric combinations of N-P-K (chemical symbols of Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K)) – for example NPK – 30-10-10 .

Choosing Your Orchid Fertilizer: Home-Made versus Manufactured Orchid Fertilizers

Choosing the right orchid fertilizer isn’t as easy as it may sound. One of the biggest decisions that one needs to make in this regard is to choose from manufactured and home-made orchid fertilizer recipes. Of course, there are pros and cons for both, but home made orchid fertilizers have the edge over the off-the-shelf options because they can be mass produced at minimal costs. More so, you end up helping the environment as waste materials get recycled during manufacture of home-made orchid fertilizers; so this may be the obvious choice.

At the same time, it is tough to get accurate measurements of NPK ratios in case of home-made options, which isn’t the case with commercial orchid fertilizers. Furthermore, the purchase of a pre-made orchid fertilizer requires only a few minutes of your time, and you’ve complete peace of mind, as these recipes are thoroughly tested unlike the home-made recipes.

In a Nutshell

Depending upon your requirements and several considerations, the choice of an orchid fertilizer may vary to a good extent. If you’re someone who doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on buying off-the-shelf options, you may try to produce your own home-made orchid fertilizer at a low cost. But, you may have to experiment a little with them, and find out their impact on the growth of your orchid plants. Alternatively, you could consider purchasing home-made fertilizer recipes that have already been tested. On the other hand, if you don’t have too much time, using pre-made orchid fertilizers is the way to go; though they definitely come at a higher price.

More Handy Tips

Be aware that orchids planted in bark require surplus nitrogen (at least 2-3 times more than potassium or phosphorus), so you should consider using NPK 30-10-10 in such cases. Similarly, it is crucial to identify the right type of orchid fertilizer under varied circumstances, and collecting more info about the matter is always the best way.

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More information

Home-made orchid fertilizer recipes
How to take care of orchids part 5: Fertilizer
Orchid Fertilizer