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How to kill your Phalaenopsis orchid with love
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Phalaenopsis Orchid: not your high maintanance beauty
The phalaenopsis orchid is aloof and independent; it’s definitely not your high-maintenance version of beauty. It requires little primping, no extravagant meals, or expensive drinks. But if you want to drive your orchid into smithereens, here are easy steps to smother your phalaenopsis orchid with seemingly too much love and attention.
WATER to kill; this will do it every time
• Instead of watering about every 7 to 10 days, or when it starts to feel dry, overwater to the point of intoxication and over-saturation. If a little water is good, too much water is better.
• Let the moss or bark drown in water. Do not let the water run out of the bottom.
• Water late in the day and never allow the leaves and crown to dry out by the evening.
• Always allow plant to stand in water or allow water to accumulate in the crown of the plant to invite disease.
FEEDING to avoid real growth
• Starve your orchid for its own good: do not feed or fertilize on a regular basis about every other watering during the summer months and every third watering during the winter months.
• Avoid using a complete fertilizer, such as Grow More 20-10-20.
LIGHT and TEMPERATURE to sunburn to death
• Place orchid in direct sunlight, not near bright windows where they would grow the best
• Instead of the ideal east facing window, place in a hot, west exposure for maximum burning.
• The ideal temperature range is between 70 to 85 degrees F during the day and be above 60 degrees F at night, so try to keep its climate either way too cold or way too hot. Generally, if you're uncomfortable, then the plant is uncomfortable also.
HUMIDITY AND CIRCULATION to insure smothering
• Never provide good humidity by placing the plant on a bed of small rocks, filled with water.
• Do not mist the leaves, but over-spray the flowers with too much water.
• Avoid some air movement at all costs; provide a desert-like environment.
RE-BLOOMING
• Although a healthy flower spike will continue to bloom for up to 2 to 3 months, shortened it’s lifespan with the above techniques.
• After the flowers fade, do not cut the spike just above the third node from the base to ensure that a flowering offshoot will not reform in about 2 months.
REPOTTING
• Do not repot your orchid in the milder months of spring or early summer after blooming season, using an orchid bark mix.
• Select the pot size that is too large for the root mass so it is not slightly over-crowded.
It may be hard to do and take some patience, but you can kill your phalaenopsis orchid with these simple instructions.
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