How to grow orchids with dry cultivation? Sharing my orchid-growing experience and insights

Occasional Notes on Orchid Growing ------ On Dry Cultivation

Having posted about clear cultivation, I figured I should also talk about dry cultivation, because combining clear cultivation with dry cultivation makes orchid growing twice as effective with half the effort. Clear cultivation relates to fertilizer, dry cultivation relates to water; fertilizer and water are the two major elements of orchid growing. Once you have a good grasp of these two major elements, fertilizer and water, you can say you have solved the key problems in orchid growing. Clear cultivation is controversial, and dry cultivation will likewise be controversial. Having controversy is not a bad thing; controversy clarifies right and wrong and broadens knowledge. Despite the controversy, I still want to speak, because these are my personal views, casting a brick to attract jade; I respectfully ask for additions to what I have left out and corrections to what is wrong. Dry cultivation is a management method of using less water compared with ordinary orchid growing. The frequency and duration of drying vary with the person, the season, the environment, the potting medium and the orchid plant. Ordinary management is dry-dry-wet-wet; dry cultivation should be dry-dry-dry-wet-wet, or dry-dry-dry-dry-wet-wet. Zheng Tongmei's ((Orchid Growing Experiments)) contains a chapter on dry mud, which discusses the reasons, effects and methods of dry cultivation. "For all orchids and cymbidiums, nothing works better than drying the pot mud once or twice (one time is before the grass sprouts, drying thoroughly so the new shoots will surely be thick; the other is after the mold period, drying only the pot surface for flower production), with drying down to the root base as the standard (to test whether the roots are dry, slowly part the cracks in the dry mud with a thin bamboo strip and you will know). Orchids in the mountains have a dry period every year, yet in pots they are constantly moist all year round, which seems unsuited to their nature, hence the problem of thin, small leaves. Tracing the source of drying the pot, it is roughly that dry mud swells when it meets moisture, and dry roots bite into the mud when they meet dampness, so they gain strength and start growing. After the pot is dry, it is best to get thorough rain. If there is no rain, place the pot in a shady spot and wait for rain, then after thorough rain return it to the sun (in autumn, which is also the time for budding, it should be wet and not dry; if dry, the flower buds will be damaged). My dry cultivation is more extreme than Zheng Tongmei's dry mud. In summer and winter I manage on the dry side, often drying the mud; in spring and autumn I manage with slight dryness, drying the mud once or twice. Orchids cannot be dried to death. In the summer and autumn of 2004, my area had high temperatures and drought, with no rain for more than two months. When I went up the mountain to look for orchids, I saw that the mountain soil under the orchids was very dry, and the orchid roots I dug out were all shriveled, yet the orchids were not only free of disease and alive, but adapted to the pot faster and grew better. More than three years of dry cultivation practice has proven that dry cultivation has five great benefits: strengthening shoots, promoting flowers, growing roots, sterilizing and preventing disease, and easy management. The most important point of dry cultivation, and perhaps the question orchid friends care about most and want to know most, is when it is appropriate to water after drying or drying out, and exactly how to judge it. Zheng Tongmei describes using a thin bamboo strip to part the dry mud and look at the roots; when you see the root base is dry, you can water. I am a lazy person with my own lazy method: I do not part the dry mud, but look at the roots growing on the pot surface outside the potting medium. During dry cultivation, when I see the roots on the pot surface are shriveled, I water; when drying the mud, I wait until the roots on the pot surface are shriveled, then wait another two or three days before watering. I find this method simple and practical, and easy to judge; in more than three years it has never caused a problem. Orchid friends who are interested can also give it a try. What to note with dry cultivation is that orchids potted but not yet putting out new roots, single-stem orchids, weak orchids, and orchids with poor roots must be treated differently and should not be too dry; in spring and autumn, apart from drying the pot, they also should not be too dry.