Orchids and a few waterlilies (long overdue!)

[Izhar]

Beautiful collection..

[hnasir]

Your water lilies and orchids are amazing, mashallah. Could you share the complete picture of the container of your water lilies?

Farooq bhai I am using two types of containers-
1. A simple gamla but a huge one with a top diameter of 2 feet and a height of about 2.5 feet. It is being used for waterlilies as they need atleast 6 inches of water above their growing tips.
2. A clay container made for waterlilies but because it is shallower, I have planted a lotus in it (though they have yet to bloom). These types are also good for the hyacinths.

All containers have fish and gladly there is no mosquito problem! I'll take a picture for you tmrw.

[hnasir]

Excellent collection, I do grow a few Orchids all are Phals , what potting medium are you using for these . My Phals cannot tolerate much Sun so I got them burnt badly last month. What's your Orchid feed and how often ?

Thank you .. Adnan bhai I had three phals- I killed one, the other was in the ICU but is now recovering well, the third is doing okay. I killed the first with too much sun- burnt all the leaves in one day! The second died because of overwatering I experimented with sphagnum moss as the medium it stayed too wet. The third is in charcoal chunks (koila we use for bbq). It is doing well. I use koila for all my orchids the reason being:
1. It is cheap and easily available.
2. Good drainage! It does dry out faster and it suits my watering schedule i.e. every other day (Sphagnum/peat remain wet for weeks).
3. It is airy- other mediums suffocate the roots and orchids love airy roots.

For orchid feeding I use a 20-20-20 water sol fertilizer at quarter to half strength once a week, and foliar spray once a week in the growing phase. I increase foliar when the flowering stems are coming out till the bloom- larger flowers. When they are resting, I use no fertilizer but A/C water (which is close to distilled) to water them to flush out all the salts.

[KBW]

What a fabulous collection. Absolutely fantastic and an eye candy

[Syed Adnan]

I am keeping one of my Orchid without Medium and it's going we'll

[khabbab]

Beautiful. I grew lots of daylilies once, even got few tubers from Kew gardens UK as a gift. Then discarded when dengue invaded. I was never good at keeping fish in bowl. My waterlilies were always in full sun and every fortnight a sprinkle of grow more fertilizer.

[hnasir]

Khabab bhai how did you fertilize them?

Fish in a bowl is very different and yes you're right- they're bound to die in a bowl mostly.. But my fish are flourishing

[khabbab]

I used grow more 20-20-20 which we bought in bulk few years ago.