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Fertilizing : Only in Paphs' growing period.Matured Paphs
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| You shoud feed Paphs in their growing period basicaly. Usualy, we feed them from April to the end of Rainy season in Japan. If you keep your greenhouse upper 15 C in winter, you may feed from the middle in Feb. In mid summer, you don't feed because it is too hot and Paphs will stop to grow. When you establish air conditioner in your greenhouse or you bring Paphs up to the higher mountains, you may feed because Paphs will continue to grow. When the rainy season finish and it will be hot, it is a ideal that there is not left the elements of fertilizer in the potting materials. So you had better feed to run short before the end of rainy season. Another growing period of Paphs is in Autumn. The hight of Sun will be lower but it is hot still in the day but it will be lower temperature in the night. You may feed from the night temperature is 20 C to 15 C. You want to run short fertilizer before the temperature in the night is 15 C. The period will be so long. So it will be dificult to feed for the biginners. For the biginners, you don't expect the much growth in autumn and rest them for comming winter. For Fitilizer, we have solid and liquid types. In Japan, almost of all solid type is organic and the liquid type is inorganic. You may use any of them. |
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| The typical solid fertilizer is the fermentated mixture of oilcake and bone meal. It is very easy to get in shop for you. But the market products hold much of fowl droppings instead of bone meal. The results cause too much Nitrogen. But you don't need to care so nerves about it. If you want to make it better, you can make by yourself. You get oilcake and bone meal ( the manmal's meal is better than fish's ) and mix tem in the ratio 1:1 ~ 1:0.5. Adding water to the mixture, knead and make cake like a ball or plate. Keep them in shade to avoid rain for a few weeks. When the cakes bigin to fermentate, Stron smell will come out. If you put the mixture before fermentating, the temperature of cake will going up to over 40 C and bring trouble to plants. Put a size of thum tip for 15 cm accross pot. Too much feed is not good for plants. It will cause roots' rot and salt problems for plants. To much feed is one of the biggest problems for the biginners. Now you know, it is not so easy to feed solid type fertilizer. In these days , we can get organic liquid fertilizer in shop. It is better for the biginners. But read the directions and keep it. In some case , you had better dilute them thinner than they recomend. Be careful not to make a mistake in dilution and not to feed so much. |
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| For using solid fertilizer, you have to used to use . Bur Liquid fertizer is very convenient for the biginners because it is very easy to dilute and you can choose the ratio of elements labeled on the bottle. For the biginners and the persons who don't have confidence to feed, I recomend liquid fertilizer to feed for Paphs. In shop, we can get various kinds of liquid fertizer easily. In these days, some of them contains minor elements that may be better for growing. The major elements of the liquid fertilizer is Phosphate(P), Nitrogen(N) and Karium(K). The products mixted these 3 components in various rate dependent on the purpose. As it is very easy to identify the ratio from the label on bottle, you have to check the label before use. In the growing period, from March to July,feed Paphs the fertilize of which componets is N : P : K = 10 : 10 : 10 or partition of N is little bit higher. On the other hand, another growing period from Sep. and Oct., you had better feed the fertilizer of which componets is higher in P and lower in N. These type of fertilizer will effective of enriching plants and flowering. You have to care the rate of elements of fertilizer for their usage. When you use these fertilizer, they recommend to dilute about 1000 times. You had better dilute more 2 or 3 times diluted one from the recommendation, 1 or 2 times a week. As in the case of solid type fertilizer, don't feed too much and too high density one. To feed thinner one many times is much more effective than to feed thicker one a few times. From the stand point, I recommend you feed thinner fertilizer from 5 to 10 times from the recommendation for every watering. When you keep your greenhouse higher than 15 C, you may continue to feed the thinner fertilizer to young plants in winter. Because they are growing in winter. |
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| I have another site of Desease and Pest Control for Paphs. If you want to see the site, would you visit the site. You can visit there from the Index and here. But now, Only Japanase site is available. In near future, I'll try to translate i English. So, please wait for a while . Thank you. |
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