Orchid Care Insights: Sharing Experience from the Orchid Growing Process

Chance Insights from Growing Orchids - On Dry Cultivation

After posting about lean cultivation, I figured I should also talk about dry cultivation, because combining lean cultivation with dry cultivation makes orchid growing twice as effective with half the effort. Lean cultivation relates to fertilizer, and dry cultivation relates to water. Fertilizer and water are the two major elements of orchid growing. If you master these two major elements well, you can say you have solved the key problems in orchid growing. Lean cultivation is debated, and dry cultivation will likewise be debated. Having debate is not a bad thing; debate clarifies right and wrong and broadens knowledge. Despite the debate, I still want to speak, because these are personal views, casting a brick to attract jade. I humbly ask for additions to what I have left out and corrections for 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 by person, by season, by environment, by potting medium, and by orchid plant. General 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 Cultivation Experiments)) has a chapter on drying the 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 drying thoroughly before grass emerges, so new shoots will surely be thick; the other is after the mold period, drying only the pot surface for flower emergence), with drying down to the root bottom as the standard (to test the method for dry roots, slowly part the cracks in the dry mud with a thin bamboo slip and all will be clear). Orchids in the mountains have a dry period year after year, yet in pots they are kept moist all year round, which seems unsuitable to their nature, hence the problem of thin, small leaves. Tracing the source of drying pots, it is roughly that when dry mud meets moisture it swells, and when dry roots meet moisture they bite into the mud, so they gain strength and start growing. Only after the pot is dry is thorough rain best. If there is no rain, place the pot in a shady spot and wait for rain; after thorough rain, return it to the sun (autumn is also the time for flower buds to form, when it should be moist and not dry; if dry, it damages the flower buds). My dry cultivation is even more so than Zheng Tongmei's drying of mud. In summer and winter, management is on the dry side, often drying the mud; in spring and autumn, management is slightly dry, 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 orchid plants was very dry, and all the orchid roots dug out were shriveled. The orchid plants not only did not get sick or die, 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 making management easy. 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 the mud, and exactly how to judge it. Zheng Tongmei introduced using a thin bamboo slip to part the dry mud and look at the roots; when you see the root bottom 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 outside the potting medium on the pot surface. During dry cultivation, when I see the roots on the pot surface are shriveled, I water; when drying the mud, after the roots on the pot surface are shriveled, I wait another two or three days before watering. I find this method simple and practical, and easy to judge. For more than three years, there have been no problems. Orchid friends who are interested can also give it a try. What dry cultivation requires attention to is that orchid plants that have just been potted and have not put out new roots, single-stem orchid plants, weak orchid plants, and orchid plants with poor root systems must be treated differently and should not be too dry. In spring and autumn, apart from drying the pot, they should not be too dry either.