Name: Big Bill Livonia Michigan (Zone 6a) If you need to relax, grow plants!!
Reasons why you don't use ice cubes:
Phalaenopsis are tropical plants and need water of around 80-90 degrees. Not ice water. It can damage roots
Phalaenopsis roots penetrate deep within their pot or basket. Watering with ice cubes does not allow the water to penetrate deep enough to reach all the roots. This can lead to root loss.
If you fertilize your Phalaenopsis, using ice cubes does not distribute fertilizer at all. It remains concentrated in the upper level of the media. This can burn and injure roots leading to root loss.
Bottom line: most experts agree that a good and healthy root system is the key to successful orchid growing. Watering using ice cubes DOES NOT promote good root growth!
Orchid lecturer, teacher and judge. Retired Wildlife Biologist. Supervisor of a nature preserve up until I retired.
I agree using ice is just a gimmick some buddy came up with.
strange too. why would ice work
another thing i don't like about phals is they are potted in spagnum that rots quick and breaks down. . orchid roots need to breathe and sphagnum prevents this. than again most people who buy these on impluse don't keep the orchid after it blooms and its cheaper for the mass makers to do it anyway
Exactly!
With my watering practices Sphagnum is the worst medium, if I see orchids at a vendor's table planted into that, I keep right on walking past that vendor. But one time the vendor actually removed the pot and let me see the roots. I thought that was very accommodating.
But it will surely hold the moisture during long times of transit, that's why many growers use it.
Name: Empress of India Hatfield MA (Zone 5b) Master Gardener/Western MA
My mother does the ice cube thing; hers blooms every winter. I could pass out from the jealousy. I think the ice cube thing is both kind of dumb and totally sensible. Basically it's 'throw two shot glasses of water into it a week'. I can see the appeal. It's guidance and orchids have a learning curve.
Mine didn't thrive on that method and I up-potted them into clay orchid pots with a bark/moss mixture last spring and now water when they are completely dry by submerging them for an hour or so and then ignoring them for a week or two.
I know it's not recommended, but they have lots of new roots and seem really happy. One might have a spike but I'm trying not to rorsharch that little thing into a future flower.
I'm hopeful. I got the two (phal and mini-phal) year before last. I haven't seen them bloom since our first season together, but they're healthy and I can tell...so....if nothing else I have house plants with big floppy ears.
Some day I hope to graduate to more impressive varieties but I feel like I'm still mastering phals.
For a time. I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
...and that, EmpressOfIndia, is how so many of us start.
Welcome to our forum and don't forget to post photos of your blooms into our current months bloom thread when your plants bloom. I'm feeling confident that what you are seeing are in fact spikes.
Name: Carol Santa Ana, ca Sunset zone 22, USDA zone 10 A.
It wasn't the way I started, but that's because my zone has Cymbidiums and Epidendrums as garden plants, but I found sites like this, and had to expand my knowledge.
I was at the store the other day looking at the grocery store phals. Yes I bought two. They were so cheap I couldn't help it and they were really nice. Anyway, there was another woman standing beside me and she was complaining that she had bought lots over the years but they never bloomed for her. I gave her some advise but then she dropped on me that she uses ice cubes to water because that's what the instructions said. I tried to discourage her from this practice but she was adamant. Oh well so be it on her head. My conservatory is full of blooms and not an ice cube in sight.
It wasn't the way I started, but that's because my zone has Cymbidiums and Epidendrums as garden plants, but I found sites like this, and had to expand my knowledge.
