Commercial Floriculture

Organic feeding

• Organic fertilizers like

  • Cow dung,
  • Chicken manure,
  • Groundnut cake,
  • Neem cake etc. can be moderately used.
  • These must be soaked in water at 1:10 or 1:20 for 2 to 3 days to allow decomposition of the fertilizer.
  • The supernatant solution is used for spraying once of twice a month.
• The use of organic fertilizers seems obvious since they are the natural food or orchids. Unfortunately, however, the precise chemical formulae of organic feeds are not usually known and it is therefore impossible to control accurately a plant’s intake.
• The application of organic feeds has a great disadvantage in that it decomposes the potting compost very quickly.
• There are several commercial organic feeds on the market and many of these are good for orchids, especially those prepared from fish or seaweed bases.