DISCOVER WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MIX ORCHIDS WITH ICE CUBES

Some orchids are sold with instructions telling you to water the plants using ice cubes. If the orchid you have purchased has given you this information it would be perfectly reasonable to believe that this was good advice. In fact when you listen to the experts you discover that using ice cubes is the one sure way to kill the plant. Various reasons have been suggested as to why using ice cubes is beneficial including that it will prevent overwatering or that the ice kills bacteria in the water. This article from the Oregon Orchid Society sets out the facts so you will be left in no doubt as to how to treat your orchids if you want them to thrive.

ICE ON YOUR ORCHID?
At our many informational talks at local nurseries, we?ve had an increasing number of questions about whether or not it?s a good idea to put ice on your orchids to water them. Because all of the people that asked this question had dead orchids after they attempted to do this, we felt that it was an important enough issue to address before talking about general orchid culture.If you want our basic advice regarding, ?Should I water my orchids with ice?? here it is: ?No?. Orchids that are sold with this advice are grown in mass quantities in greenhouses the size of football fields. These orchids, to save costs, are potted in the least expensive ?pots? possible which have little to no drainage. Furthermore, they are planted in dense moss which is conducive to being grown in these large greenhouses where they are misted every few hours rather than watered. You may have heard that the main way people kill orchids is by overwatering them. This is really not true! Orchids that are potted in the proper media, with well draining pots, will have the wet-dry cycle that they want. In the cheap pots and dense moss that comes with mass-produced orchids even minimal watering makes the pot become overly soggy and will kill the orchid in short order. The ice cube idea is to provide minimal water in the orchid?s suboptimal conditions. The problem is, even though this might mimic the amount of water that the orchid had in their upbringing, misted hourly in mass greenhouses, over time the plant will die from being cramped in suboptimal conditions.? If you want to keep your orchid alive for years, the solution is regular watering with room-temperature water after repotting the orchid into proper orchid mix (usually bark) and a good, well-draining pot.
If you?d like to ruminate further on orchids and ice, below are a few more thoughts on the matter?
The idea of putting ice on orchids seems very counterintuitive. After all, Phalaenopsis orchids, the main orchid being promoted to enjoy ice-water culture, are from Southeast Asia ? an area that has probably not seen ice since the last Ice Age. It is important to know the reasons that ice-watering is being plugged before examining whether or not it?s a good or bad idea.
These are the reasons that we heard for watering Phalaenopsis with ice cubes:

  1. Overwatering is the primary way people kill orchids but using a few ice cubes prevents this.
  2. Freezing water kills bacteria, so the water in ice cubes is pure.
  3. Watering with ice-temperature water will give the Phalaenopsis the ?cool drop? that it needs to set a new bloom.

While we aren?t prepared to say that watering with ice cubes will definitely benefit or harm your Phalaenopsis, we should examine each of these points individually.

See more at Oregon Orchid Society
Image source: Alias 0591

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