RYERSON FXPANSIBLE ORCHID FOLDER Page 26 
LET'S TALK ABOUT WATER AND HUMIDITY (Cont'd from Page 25) 
POT WATERING always should be thorough. Water is applied directly to the 
surface of the osmunda until it runs, freely, from the drainage holes. If 
drainage is perfect, as it should be, there is no danger of OVER-watering 
your plants during a single pot watering. If your osmunda is in healthy con- 
dition, it will hold only so much moisture, and during the relatively infre- 
quent pot waterings, it should be THOROUGHLY moistened throughout. 
OVER-watering results from too frequent pot waterings or from poor drainage. 
The osmunda should be allowed to dry out between pot waterings. This drying 
out is every bit as important as the watering, not only for the healthy con- 
dition of the osmunda but for the best growth of the plant. It is the roots 
that do not ALWAYS have plenty of moisture right at hand that grow the best. 
They are stimulated to reach out in search of moisture. If they are xept 
soaking wet, they don't grow at all. Instead they rot and die. That is the 
nature of the Orchid. 
SPRAYING THE FOLIAGE AND POTS, if properly done, will help in two ways: 
1. It will increase humidity. 2- It will enable your plant to absorb mois- 
ture through the leaves and roots growing outside the pot. 
As explained above, in POT WATERING, you take care to thoroughly wet the os- 
munda. In SPRAYING, you do just the opposite; take care NOT to wet the os- 
munda. Try your best to avoid getting much water inside the pots. If you 
are not careful about this, you will have given your plants an extra POT 
WATERING, and too many such mistakes will give unfortunate results. 
A fairly fine spray nozzle should be used for SPRAYING, which, on hot, dry 
days, when there is plenty of air circulation, may be done as frequently as 
three times during a single day, if the sprayings are confined to morning or 
early afternoon hours. 
NEITHER POT WATERING nor SPRAYING should ever be done late in the afternoon 
or evening. The foliage must have time to dry off completely before night- 
fall. This is especially important when new leads are in the "cup" stage. 
If these cups are allowed to hold water overnight, black rot may result and 
you will lose the lead and the blooms you anticipated. 
Omitting the evening watering or spraying of his Orchids may spoil some of 
the fun for the T.B.M. who comes home from a hectic day in the office and 
wants to "do something” for his Orchids. But he would be doing much more 
for them (and, mayhap, for himself (if he were to roll out of bed an hour 
earlier in the morning and spray them before he goes to the office. 
If anything, it is even more difficult to tell you how to maintain the proper 
HUMIDITY in your greenhouse than it is to tell you how often to water. While 
humidity is important, it should never be maintained at the sacrifice of air 
circulation. Hot, musty, breathtakingly close atmosphere is not beneficial 
to Orchids. Remember, they LIKE to have periods of drying out. Obviously, 
they could never dry out in a constantly humid condition. 
On the other hand, you do not want drafts blowing directly on your plants 
so that they dry out TOO QUICKLY. Wetting the walls, benches and floor of 
your greenhouse while spraying on hot, dry mornings will help increase humid- 
ity. If you live in a climate that is always excessively dry, some sort of 
humidifier may be necessary. There are a number of good ones on the market. 
