Its ok to do it with fertilizers, but whether or not the plant will actually benefit from it is one of the more hotly contested debates in the orchid world. I'll avoid that debate and address your questiond directly: The only thing you have to worry about, as far as the addition of ferts to your misting water is concerned, is fert residue buildup on the leaf surface that you'll have to wash off from time to time. Me personally, I'd just do a plain misting (though i don't mist cause it does NOT benefit your plants in any way) so i would have to deal with the buildup, and potentially wasting money on ferts the plants may not be using anyways.

Its my understanding that folar feeding can be accomplished by superthrive to some degree. Common Ferts are formulated to be taken up by the root system.

All kinds of people bring me their sick orchids. I see what misting can do to them. My neighbour misted her plants with fertiliser, it left unremoveable marks on the leaves over time. I also saw some strange dimpling.

Misting is a risky business. It can bring more problems that help. It doesn't increase th RH around the plant for any measurable length of time, especially in a dry environment. Kind of like humidity trays. Great in theory but not what it's cracked up to be in application. If you don't have good air movement, you are inviting problems by misting. Some plnats will not tolerate it at all, Bellina types come to mind

Brad may or may not have a case about spider mites and the like. Spider mites are caused by high temps and/or low humidity. A humidifyer takes care of that indoors in winter.

While nature is one thing, indoor growing is another. If you have all situ conditions mimicked, then mist away. If not, you are taking a risk. It may come down to bugs or rot. I'm not willing to take the risk

Clara

It has been my experience that misting is all right if you have good air movement and you don't allow water to collect in the crowns/leaf axils of your plants.

As for mites, infestation can come from several causes, mostly proximity to plants already infested (that includes other houseplants) or to airborne transport from outdoors. It may appear that hot and dry environments have more mites, but that is often because the plant's leaves are not being doused with water either from rain or a hose which would mechanically wash off some of the pests. I have never seen humidity prevent or stop an infestation, despite the 80% in my GH (or when I grew outdoors in humid Miami), and they still pop up even when it doesn't go over 60F during the winter. So my observation over many years and the observations of many others has convinced me that temp and humidity don't really have much to do with it. It's just an old wive's tale which keeps popping up over time, partly because old orchids books originally put out in the 1960s keep getting reprinted over and over without editing older erroneous information out.

LOL ok brad:

Quote Brad
What people do not understand is that orchids in their native habitat are frequently shrouwded in mist and dew

Not all orchids are from the dew and mist filled tropics, so this isn't necessarily and accurate statement. Most people do grow the tropical varieties (though remember there are orchids that come from tropical areas that don't see a lick of moisture for a number of months), and they in fact DO understand they are often shrouded in humidity, which is why so many people mist. However, a light misting in the morning is hardly analogous to a morning dew/humidity soaking. Just step outside and tell me you can replicate the thick morning layer of dew on your grass and soil with 1/3 of a spray bottle. To truely replicate that, you have to pretty much water your plant every morning. A mounted plant would thrive int hat, but a potted plant would rot in a week! Your misting sticks around for maybe 15-20 min if your lucky. In nature (and in greenhouses if you hose them down in the morning), that dew/humidity soaking lasts for quite a few hours. I won't argue with your apparent success, and you have the right idea to mimic as well as you can the natural conditions your plants grow in, but i bet dollars to donuts that if you stopped misting for a month, you won't see any difference. You have to realize the limitations of your abilities to recreate mother natures perfection. IMHO, Clara is correct (see that, clara?;) )in that misting invites more problems than it helps, though I don't believe its that much more of a problem to warrant a rather alarmist position.

Regarding mites: the only way misting could help keep them at bay is if you use a high pressure pesticide applicator right on the mites. This will physically remove them but doesn't necessarily kill them. Hot/dry generally are the environments that foster mites, and if you had a mite problem that'd be the first thing i'd suggest to fix. However, I've also seen them in cool humid and hot humid greenhouses (Brugmansias and Citrus), so its definitely not the cure-all.

Does it help or doesn't it? I don't know. I've read both sides of the argument. All of my mounts are watered by spraying water from a hose. To fertilize, I put it in a pump sprayer. All portions of the plant receive the fertilizer, roots and leaves, paying particular attention to the underside of the leaves. If the plants utilizes fertilizer via the leaves, it is "supposedly" the underside of the leaves that is important. My mounts are certainly happy.

If the orchid is in a pot and gets fertilized with a watering can, it doesn't get the foliar spray. My pots are pretty happy too.

Most commercial fertilizers recommend foliar feeding in addition to root feeding the plants. Hype? Probably just to get people to buy more fertilizer. If a person wants to foliar feed I don't think it will hurt the plants if as cjwatson said, the leaf axil/crown doesn't remain wet for long periods of time. Not only do orchid pots need to be flooded to eliminate the build up of salts in the mix, leaves should also be flooded to remove the grime/dust/whatever from the surfaces of the leaves.

I grew plants every winter under lights - never, not once, did I get an infestation of spider mites, although aphids would pop up some years, but not others. Welcome to the world of g/h growing, I had my first spider mites in my very humid g/h.

Brooke

50,100 hits on the subject.

Neither Taylor's or Ortho mentions the cause of infestations, simply cures. It's very important to keep an orchid library current

- http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/4DMG/Pests/spidmite.htm

- http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:qM-ZYGWFEzQJ:growell.co.uk/%3Ff%3Ddownload.php%26binacode%3D25+spider+mites+humidity&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us

- http://www.hydro-gardens.com/spidermite.htm

- http://www.evergreengardenworks.com/mites.htm

From The link below "get rid of things.com":

Signs of Spider Mites

Small brown or yellow dots on the leaves of a plant are the most easily observed sign of a mite infestation, but if you look more closely you should start to see very small strands of silk or webbing on the plant, especially underneath the leaves. The under sides of leaves are where spider mites tend to spin more complex webs where they will lay eggs. Spider mite eggs usually take 4-5 days to hatch and adulthood is usually reached within a week, depending on how hot and how dry the air is. An ambient temperature higher than 85 degrees and a relative humidity of less than 60% produce optimal conditions for spider mite reproduction and maturity.

Thanks TerpGuy!

Clara
Bugless at 76º and 70% RH

Here is a link that might be useful: Spider Mites: Heat and Humidity

Most of the orchids I buy have fertilizer residue on their leaves so I'm guessing that professional growers fertilize the entire plant. Then again if there's residue, how much of the fertilizer has been absorbed by the leaves, if any.

Thanks for all the responses. The simple reason I used 'fertilized' misting water was because after I had prepared some water with fertilizer in it I didn't want to pour the unused portion down the drain. So, I filled up my mister. But then I noticed white fertilizer residue on my leaves and thought I should pose the question. You always hear about built up salts being bad for the plant so I associated the white leaf build up with that and became concerned.

Great to have all the help here on the forum. Thanks again.

Not all residue on plant leaves is harmful salts. Back when I grew my orchids in S. Florida during the 1960s through the mid-80s, my well water coming from underneath the solid coral rock always left a thick crusty white deposit on the plants which was unsightly, but harmless.

And yes, nurseries and most greenhouse growers use overhead systems to both water and fertilize their plants.

I mist daily, except when it is raining outside. During summer I may mist twice or more times. My small fan runs 24/7. I grow in a small greenhouse. What I do is make sure that I get all the mounted (except for the laelias, encyclias, etc. when at rest) a good soaking and then mist down the ceiling, walls, studs. And apply a fine spray into the air around the orchids. I do not necessarily water the plants on any schedule but rather check their pots to see how dry they look or feel and will water as needed then.
But I also grow other tropcial plants and I really soak these with a heavy mist like a fine stream off of a water breaker as I try to push the relative humidity back up to around 80%. The RH will vary from 60% to 80%+ during the day with nights being, of course, in the 80s.
For indoor growing misting may be too much for the plants especially if there is no fan to push around the air. What might work better is a fog or the finest mist that can be created that is applied 2-3 times a day with illuminated days running 14-16 hours and maintaining a nightly low of around 65F (18.3C).
For foliar feeding I use MiracleGro Liquid Plant Food with a formula of 12-4-8 which works quite well and can be used with each misting. Using r/o water is probably preferable to any other since it tends to be slightly acidic. I do not have problem with residue build up.

I've used fertilizer spray on orchids irregularly for several summers. During rainy periods, "fertilizer day" is often too wet to add more water on outdoor orchids.

So I use time-release fert in summer, and also fert spray any time I think they need it, summer or winter.

I do that despite advice I got here in the dim long ago that said foliar feeding didn't work. I tried it, and to my eye, there is a tiny but noticeable perking up of the plant when sprayed. This is especially true of any plant with compromised roots, eg re-rooting catts with folded and wrinkled leaves. A tiny wrinkled scrap with no roots has no other way of getting any fert.

So I don't use it because of any advertising, but because I've seen my plants respond to it.

As Brooke says, spray the underside of the leaves and keep the crown and/or young growths areas dry. New catt growths can rot very easily if water gets into them.

If you like to do it, *and* you're careful to keep the critical areas dry, why not?

CJ: your observations on temp/humidity explain a lot about the mysteries of winning and losing against mites. Peter Lin at Big Leaf also advocates frequent leaf-washing.

Gives me another excuse for splashing water around, which I do love to do. :)

as CJ is saying the overhead watering system is more for convenience of the large growers.

I would not associate residue on leaves bought at the store with purposeful foiler feeding.

Not to mention but I have just started to fertilize again the last watering, my orchids probably have not had fertilizer in at least 5 months, they are blooming and putting up new growth as much and in some cases more than when I used fertilizer often.

As Howard once mentioned, you can give them all the water and fertilizer you want, but if they are not getting the light to use it then there will be no benefit.

So if you mist, make sure you light is about twice as much as you think you need.

Relative humidity is a measure of the amount of water vapor in air. Water vapor is completey invisible as the molecules of H20 are a couple of atoms wide. Water droplets from a quality misting nozzle are a couple to three microns wide. Phenomenally gigantic compared to the atom sized molecules of water vapor. Water droplets from a cheap spray bottle are many times larger than the three micron droplets from the greenhouse quality mister. Bacteria and other microscopic organisms can live and reproduce in the micron and larger sized 'mist' droplets and this is why misting is discouraged. Humidification whether or not it involves visible mist will see zero actual droplets at the leaf surface. Air exchange in a cloud forest situation replaces the air parcels many hundreds of times per hour with fresh humid air. Air turnover indoors is as little as one change in 12 hours! One is doing fantastic to get five changes of air in one hour. If one lights and heats orchids to anything close to natural levels one can indeed mist them to abandon with any old spray bottle and put them away wet and they will be none the worse for wear. At household illumination levels it is tempting fate to use droplet misting but even when not actually harmful, it is providing questionable benefit. As it was put very well earlier, "i bet dollars to donuts that if you stopped misting for a month, you won't see any difference." That is about my take on it as well.

H

So...
Howard since you have helped me before; would you recommend a vaporizing humidifier or an evaporative one to bring humidity up?

The vaporizing sometimes results in droplets on the leaves that the mist falls on; but raises the humidity in the plant area without raising the entire room as much.

LOL
RE: terpguy, you must be a biologist. You took the bait, after I wrote that, I thought to myself, if I were reading that, I would say the same thing you just said. What about Eulophia and some dendrobiums? In any case, most of the orchids we keep (phals, catts, cymbidiums, paphs) really appreciate the added humidity. For me, I sometimes misting is more useful to me than to the plants. It gives me a chance to get close and inspect them daily and I enjoy it. I feel really bad for people (like me) who constantly fill the humidifier up with water 3 times a day. To me that is a chore.

In any case, I keep some of the humidity cravers here at work and I mist them religiously every am. Sometimes, if it is warm and sunny I give a gentle mist at lunch. When a spider mite infection broke out on another floor....I even misted at night....there, I said it. I misted at night and was proud of it. Of course, I didn't mist the vandas, but the cymbidium and the lime, ficus, and palms all got misted until dropping wet. Of course our atrium is very bright, and even the gray days of winter are brighter by a white reflective building across the street and fluorescent lights in the lobby. In any case, I've never seen a fungal infection in any of my indoor plants, but plenty of aphids when I take misting holidays.

The Christmas party has been held, the trophies have been handed out, and the first three place getters collectively exhibited about 500 plants of various genera, of which almost nil were grown with the benefit of misting systems.

As for this foliar feeding thing, cannot say because i just water the whole plant because i have so many.

To my eye some people with glasshouses equipped with misting systems produce plants that look lank/sappy.

Red spider is a major pest of Cymbidiums but no one i know goes around misting a Cymbidium, they just water the whole plant including thoroughly wetting under the leaves at each watering. So there may be a case for misting under the leaves if you are trying to grow Cymbidiums under lights.

Here, Sydney, Australia might be regarded as tropical by some. It isn't and there are some notable Genera that no one in there right mind would attempt to grow without a glasshouse set for cloud forest conditions. Dracula, Miltoniopsis etc. etc. where perhaps frequent misting is appropriate.

Prior to moving to Florida, I questioned the utility of misting, seemed rather futile, and I was living in the south. Now that I'm in the subtropics, albeit just barely, trust me when I say, misting might make you feel better but it ain't doing a thing for the plants. It's customary for our nighttime humidity to be 90%. The dew can be so thick it sounds like rain dripping off the house at night. Right now, the lake, most mornings, has mist/steam/fog on it until about 6:45 in the morning. My plants sit at the edge of the lake. They are dripping wet in the morning. If you were to try to mimic that in your house, your walls would sweat. Not good. Misting out of a bottle, can't come close. Even shrouded in mist, all night, my mounted plants are bone dry by 10 am, once the sun hits them.

Yes, some orchids need to be kept damp. Those of mine that do, are kept on the sunporch, as they don't like a lot of light either. Hence, it's easy to keep them damp but I don't mist, I just take the hose to them and/or let them sit in a saucer of water.

Vaporizers work infinitely better than humidifiers and have the added benefit of not needing filters.

I was just at Wal*Mart looking for a humidifier as this thread reminded me that; "hey it is winter my vaporizer died last spring."

There is a new thing out that seems to be designed for us orchid growers, it is made by Vicks and called the Vicks FilterFree Humidifier.

This has a vent on the top that shoots straight up light wick humidifiers and has a nice strong fan like wick humidifiers but is a vaporizer so I have a nice jet of misty air shooting up my rack of orchids between the lights and the front of the shelves.

This works out really nice because my high light lower humidity guys are on top and the lower light higher humidity guys are in the middle and plans for mountings are on the bottom level. So check this thing out it looks well made and we will see how it works.

So for you mist people this to me is a better solution.

Thanks for the info 'me' how much did it cost and how much water does it hold? I bought 3 Vicks vaporizers last month and like them - they are taller than wide. The top has a handle and comes off to bring to the sink. Easy to fill. But they only hold approx a gallon, so I'm always filling. No filter either. They cost about $35.00 each. They send up a very fine mist.

Jane

This was about $45.00 at wal*mart and hold a gallon, they say this will last between 18-24 hours so at the level of use we would be using I would say 12-18 but we will see
this is a little longer than it is tall and the tank sits to the side of the part that makes the mist both being about equal in size.

So far it seems to be working real well. It also has an automatic shut off when it gets to the humidity you want.

I haven't figured out where to set that yet, but about half way it shuts off around 50%

Here is a link that might be useful: amazon has it just so you can check it out

dear sweet jebus look what we've done to poor biowheels thread. A simple misting question and here we are arguing about misting benefits and tagents about spider mites and humidifiers :)

LOL well I figured humidifiers applied to topic.

I don't think of misting as "misting", I think of it as supplemental watering. In my dry indoor conditions, and with all the aerial roots I have, I mist roots and the surface of the medium a couple of times a day, and no one can tell me that it doesn't help. I have several plants that are "bedded" with sphagnum and the sphagnum gets moistened at the same time.

I mist leaves too. The process prompts me to examine the leaves, it keeps them clean, and the dripping adds a little more moisture to the surface of the medium without soaking in too far. And because it makes me feel good! ;>)

John

And because it makes me feel good! ;>)

John, that's called having an overactive nurturing gene, and it's a very nice thing for a person to have.

Thank you cj. What a sweet thing to say!

J

My feeling is unless you mist every 5-10 minutes 24/7 it really does nothing for humidity. Get a good humidifier. I have an Air-o-swiss 2 gallon. Works GREAT. Brings my humidity up fast, adds 20-40% more humidity to the surrounding air. With it on I'm usually at 60-75%, without it 30-40%...

Happy Holidays!

Living here on the wet coast, my humidity is between 60 - 65% in the Garden Room. I still mist when I water but I have found that I am getting too much mould so now have 2 fans running 24/7.

We'll I live in nc & recently was given two moth orchids that the person over watered & almost killed because they didn't understand the proper way to water. I trimmed all the dead rotted rots which was almost every one reported them & I must mine every morning & evening & I must once a week with a week plant food solution & my orchids are growing new roots like crazy & I have had one to grow 2 new flower buds from a spent flowering stem . Misting doesn't hurt in my opinion but you need to research your orchid & maintain proper air circulation & plant hygiene .

Roger, did you see the date of the last entry on this ancient thread. If you think misting is important perhaps start a new thread.