To me, "fertilize heavily" suggests using a stronger concentration of a product more than once weekly. Orchids such as Catasetum and Lycaste are deciduous. They grow rapidly during a relatively short period.

"Leach"? yuk. I prefer to use the word water. It's more positive! Typically, these plants often receive daily rainfall during their growth period.

--Stitz--

Stitz, thanks. By leach/flush, I mean running extra water through so the extra fertilizer salts don't burn the roots. With Catasetae, maybe the terms don't apply because there's so much additional water. WC8

hi, what i find works for me is that i water the plant first and using a spray bottle i apply a heavier fertilizer solution on they plant.
sue

Back when I first joined the AOS (and could afford to rejoin, no more) they sent me a book _Your First Orchid_ which had lots of information, including this tidbit: deciduous plants that experience rapid growth, like catasetums, are often fertilized at triple strength, i.e., if the package calls for 1t/gallon, growers use 1T/gallon.
I was shocked, too. And have never quite been able to do this, but if you want to try, you can tell us how it goes!
Cheers - Nancy

From mid-May through July, I use up to 1 Tablespoon per gallon of some fertilizers on some plants. It's effective.

--Stitz--

Thanks folks. Nancy, I'm triple-strenghing it for the next 2-3 weeks. One of the commercial growers says he does foliar feeding in spring by spraying leaves w/ 6x the strength of usual fertilizer and not fertilizing the medium. We'll see what happens w/ 3x in the Ctsae sphag. WC8