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Can you use leftover orchid fertilizer to fertilize your other household plants
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And yes, you can, but not all the time. And I'll explain in this video why
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Hi, I'm Amanda Matthews and thank you for watching this video at Orkidaria
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The answer quick and simple is yes, you can if you're not watering a vegetable garden or produce
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or anything that you will consume later on. So if it is a household plant that's just for looks
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you're fine. The downside is the quantity, the proportions, the percentages of fertilizer that you
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will be providing to your household plants. Now, this makes total sense. I mean, think about it just for a second
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In nature, orchids will get like a buffet of food 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because in the rainforest, not all orchids are from the rainforest
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I get that a lot. But most phalanopsis are, so I'm going to focus on them
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In the rainforest, they will get nutrients 24 hours. I mean, it's going to rain. The wind currents are going to come. The aerial roots are going to pick that up
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So the doses are incredibly tiny. But if you add those doses up over time, you will get an increasingly amount of fertilizer
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So we have this tendency to think that orchids need very little fertilizer
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In fact the end result is a lot of fertilizer It just applied in little bitty doses over you know that why we fertilize three weeks out of the four The first sign of overwatering or over
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fertilizing on a household plant is that the leaf tips are going to turn brown and crunchy
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The second sign is they're going to have yellow or brown dots all the way around the leaf
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So what exactly am I giving my piece lily
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The first will be nitrogen. You can either find that as nitrogen or nitrate
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This nitrogen is just going to help the plant work on root growth and leaf
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development. It has nothing to do with the flower. So if your plant is in flower, that nitrogen's not going
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to help it. But if it is developing new leaves all the time, then this nitrogen is beneficial
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So you're okay on that one. The second component, which is phosphorus, which is the, is going to
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help the orchid develop this healthy, nice blossom. And in your plant, household plant
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it will do the same. So you're good there. And the third component, which is potassium, the K in the NPK ratio, is going to work on the healthy
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defense system or translating this. It helps the orchid fight off diseases. It helps the orchid
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work on opening and closing the stomata It helps the orchid work on healthy strong cells and helps the orchid work on the inside of the nutrient system Now what happens if we use this water every week on our household plants it not going to help the household plant
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It's going to hinder it because too much fertilizer is actually worse than not enough
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This overload of chemicals is going to make the plant weaker because those chemicals are going to
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fight, fight, compete within each other and usually the strongest one wins. When one chemical wins
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it pushes away everything else. So let's say nitrogen wins and nitrogen is going to hinder the
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amount of phosphorus, the amount of calcium, the amount of zinc, the amount of iron, the amount
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of magnesium. All those others are going to be absorbed less because nitrogen is in there like
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I got this. Everybody else can leave. So that's the problem. You will start giving more nutrients than others
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And your plant is going to start to slowly fade. And the first sign is the leaves are going to start to get crunchy
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Quick pause for everything. I was just editing this video and realized I forgot to say something incredibly important
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And that is about root burn. Rootburn will also occur if you do not flush your orchid out once a month
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And flushing just means to water that orchid with water that does, has no fertilizer whatsoever
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You can use rainwater, reverse osmosis water, distilled water, and just pour that water over the potting media
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So it really runs out and just it like a quick bath and it just releases all that chemical buildup that inside So if your orchid is having salt residue which is like crystal it looks like crystallized sugar
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on the top of the potting media, you need to really flush your orchid out once a month
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So that week that you're not fertilizing, you need to rinse that potting media out thoroughly
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When you don't do that, that's what causes most root burn. Because sometimes we can get the proportions right on our fertilizer, but we forget to give that break in between and really get that out of the potting media
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That builds up over time. Now you can go back to the normal video
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There is one plant that will love orchid fertilizer, and that is the African violet
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I have absolutely no luck growing violets. I kill every single one of them I've given up on them years ago
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African violets will adore all this chemical fertilizer in there on a weekly doses
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You can use that for your African violet. If this video did provide any value or increase your knowledge about orchid care
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please hit that like button because that just tells me what kind of videos are working
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and what kind of videos to stay away from to make in the future
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If you have orchids that are planted in sphagnum moss, you can watch this video up here to learn three ways of how to fertilize them
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And in this video down here, you can learn everything about the fertilization methods
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At the end of that video, I'll tell you where to get a free fertilization guide on my website
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I do appreciate the time that you spent watching this video. It does mean a lot to me
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And thank you so much. Happy cultivating
