RYERSON EXPANSIBLE ORCHID FOLDER Page M. 
LET'S TALK ABOUT WATER AND HUMIDITY (Cont'd from Page L.) 
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 drain- 
age 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 condition, it will 
hold only so much moisture, and during the relatively infrequent 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 condition of the 
osmunda, but for the best growth of the plant. The roots which do not ALWAYS 
have plenty of moisture right at hand, grow the best. They are stimulated to 
reach out in search of moisture. If they are kept 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: 
l. It will increase humidity. 2. It will enable your plant to absorb moisture 
through the leaves and those roots growing outside the pot. 
As explained above, in POT WATERING, you take care to thoroughly wet the osmunda. 
In SPRAYING, you do just the opposite; take care NOT to wet the osmunda. 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 nightfall. 
This is especially important when new leads are in the "cup" stage. f 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 morn- 
ing 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 green- 
house while spraying on hot, dry mornings will help increase humidity. 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. 
