13-11-11 or 14-4-14?

Hey y'all I have a fertilizer question for you great orchid minds. I have been using Nutricote 13-11-11 at the rate of 3 prills per inch of pot width. And my orchids were doing great, but N deficiency has started to show. I want to stay with time-release fertilizer. My options are:

1- stick with 13-11-11 and just use more of it per pot.

2- Switch to Nutricote 14-4-14. (St. Augustine Orchid Society suggests that 15-5-15 is ideal for orchids and 14-4-14 is the closest thing Nutricote has.)

Right now I am supplementing with CaN to get the plants some quick nitrogen. I also supplement regularly with a weak CaMgN solution and will continue to do that either way.

Which option do you think is best? Thank you for your help!

 

Thank you both for your responses!

Marni: I just started using the CaN so there hasn't been enough time to see an effect. The first treatment was Friday. The controlled-release fertilizer is 180 day. I grow indoors and for about 3 months of the year, the temps inside my house are too low for the prills to release fertilizer. In theory (from the St. Augustine Orchid Society) they should last a year.) I have only been keeping orchids for about 18 months, but each orchid's repot date is noted on its tag, along with how many prills are in the pot, and the plan is to add more fertilizer at the one-year date.

Ray: The prills should last one year in my growing conditions (indoors, in my home, around 77'.) None of them have been in place yet for one year.

I based the number per inch on some posts on the subject that I read on an orchid site- I think on orchidworks. I appreciate your insight on this, as I am still very new to the hobby. I was afraid of adding too much and burning roots; my goal was a continuous weak feed so as to avoid much salt-build-up. I will add more prill to my "experiment phal" and see if this helps!

If I didn't use CRFs, I do not think the hobby would be accessible to me. So while it may not be ideal, it's what makes it work for me.

 

I have a correction to make: my Nutricote is 270 days, not 180.

I wasn't expecting to see results in a few days, I don't think I said anything to that effect. Marni asked if I had seen an effect so I explained that I hadn't because I had just begun. I've read that phalaenopsis take at least 4 weeks to translocate nitrogen from the roots to other parts of the plant, so while I cannot save the leaves that are being dropped now, I can address nitrogen needs going forward.

I am sorry if my post was confusing. I am aware of how CRFs work, having done a ton of reading on them before making this choice for my orchids. My home is about 77'F for most of the year except December, January, and February; the Nutricote is rated for 270 days at 77'F. During the 3 cold months, my home is in the mid-60s, at which temperature the Nutricote should release very little fertilizer (at below 50'F, it does indeed "turn off" like a switch.) I also water much less often during the cold months. This is why I estimate that it should last for about one year in my home. This will be my second winter with orchids; last winter they did grow, but much more slowly than during the spring and summer.

 

Thanks, Carl! CaN is just a convenient abbreviation I use in my notes. I track watering, feeding, repots, growth, and spikes/blooms in a calendar and journal. I have a list of abbreviations I use in this way to keep my notes shorter and faster. I apologize for the confusion, I did not mean to imply that it was the chemical formula for calcium nitrate, I was just typing from habit.

 

Thank you, Marni, I hope it's just under-fertilization that is the problem. I have one ridiculously healthy phal that I use for testing new products and methods, so it's about to get some more fertilizer.

My water is very hard, and has burned some phal surface roots, so I water with a mix of rainwater or RO and about 10% tap water to give it a little buffering capacity. The medium that my phals are in has low CEC and is also somewhat alkaline, whereas my other orchids are in a more acidic, high-CEC mix with lots of Seramis.

Thank you for sharing your experience with nitrogen supplements, I hope I can see a result so soon!