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To supplement your fertilizer, today I'm going to talk about three ways you can use tea
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as in the normal tea we always drink, to fertilize your orchids
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You need to fertilize your orchids weekly, weekly, as in using a small dose, a weak dose, and every seven days
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This is a great recommendation, but most fertilizers will only provide nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium
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the NPK ratio. Now, orchids don't just live on nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium
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Hi, I'm Amanda Matthews, and thank you for watching this video at Orcadaria
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The first thing you need to know is that tea will increase the amount of nitrogen
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inside your potting media. So if you need more nitrogen, and nitrogen helps promote roots and leaf growth
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So if your orchid is in blossom, is it in flower? Tea bags are not the best indication to use at that moment
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Use tea bags when you're focusing on healthy roots and getting nitrogen inside that potting media
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The next thing that is wonderful about tea bags is that they are full of nitrogen
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5% nitrogen, 2.5% potassium, 0.8% phosphorus, which is for fertilization mix. 0.6 calcium and 0.5% magnesium
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Now, calcium and magnesium are the two elements that we all need
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Yeah, we all need those two. But the two elements that your orchid needs for being healthy, especially calcium
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which most orchid fertilizers do not provide So you will be increasing nitrogen but you will also be increasing these other elements inside your orchids The only thing that you need to beware of in using tea bags is the
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material that these are made of. Some of these tea bags are made of plastic and I won't even
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try to pronounce that. Do not use the back. Use what's inside the back. There are six types of tea
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and the main types of tea sold in United States are only three, which are black tea, green tea, and herbal tea
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Now black tea has a pH of 5.0 to 5.5. Green tea will have a pH of in between 7 to 10, and herbal tea is neutral
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So depending on what you want for your orchid and what kind of orchid you have
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you need to be choosing appropriately the type of tea you will use
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Let's get to the three methods of using these tea bags to fertilize your orchids
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The first method is soaking the orchid roots in tea. Now, this is a good method if you have poor roots
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You can hydrate these roots back to life, hydrate the leaves too
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and soak them during the night and take them out during the day or vice versa
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But just don't make a strong concentration of this because this is a rescue method and everything in orchid care is in tiny, tiny, tiny doses
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So we always think if a little is good, a lot is better, that does not happen with tea
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The second method is when you actually have a healthy orchid. You do not want to revive or rescue an orchid with no roots or nor leaves or badly shaped leaves or dehydrated leaves
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The second method is to open, to cut open this tea bag and sprinkle the contents of the tea on the top of the potting media
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Every time you water a little bit of that tea will come down into the potting media and it will provide the extra nutrients that your orchid needs The bad thing about this is it doesn leave the
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pot as immediately as we would like it to it. So it just sits there. The good thing about this is
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that the interaction with the water and the tea inside your potting media will bring your pH down a bit
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So if you have tap water like I do in Kansas here, that is extremely high in pH, use tea to bring that tap water pH down to a 5.5, 6.5
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The third method is just to use a small, small, small amount of tea
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Just put the tea bag in the water just so it starts to change color and then immediately take it out and use that water to water weekly
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This method will provide less harm for your orchids because I especially have a tendency of like when I fertilize, I have a heavy hand
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And then the next day the leaf tips are turning brown and the flowers are kind of, you know, turning yellow
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And I know I overdid it. So tea bags, you know, just providing that little bitty dose
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As soon as you see that water change color, take out the tea bag and use that water to water your orchids
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This will bring the pH down, as I said before. If you have an extremely, extremely, extremely high content, you can use lemon too
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There are other serious problems with the lemon, but it is a way if you're not using the lemon every week
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You can use the tea bag every week as long as it's weak, not the lemon
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Now, I want you to really think what you are wanting to accomplish with this tea bag
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If you're wanting to change out your fertilization method for just tea, don't do it
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It won work Your orchids need fertilizer If you don like the store fertilizer you can make your own but tea is not a substitute for fertilizer It will increase as I said before it will
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increase a little bit those percentages inside your potting media, but it's not a substitute
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When not to use tea. When it has orange flavor, peppermint flavor, pumpkin spice, all these
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extra things that are for smell and taste. They do nothing for your orchid
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They contaminate your orchid pot. So pick a tea, when you go out to buy tea, pick one that is probably you wouldn't drink
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Probably you wouldn't drink, but your orchid will like. So shop for your orchid, not for you
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You need to fertilize your tea weekly, weekly, as in fertilizer tea. No. Now some of these tea bags can be made of a plastic called
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polypropyleney. And I will tell you what are the six types of orchid tea. If this video has
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provided any value for you please hit the like button. First because these videos take an extremely
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long time to produce and make and edit and shuffle through all the information and I do these
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because I want to provide good information for you and the like button is a little feedback to me
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if they are working or not and if you want to continue your orchid care I suggest you look at
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this video about fertilization and the five different methods of how you can fertilize your orchids
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And in this other video down here, I explain how to use eggshells to increase calcium in your orchid
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Thank you so much for watching and happy cultivating
