{"id":1088,"date":"2010-01-15T20:39:24","date_gmt":"2010-01-16T04:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/?p=1088"},"modified":"2011-01-20T16:54:17","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T00:54:17","slug":"ice-cubes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/15\/ice-cubes\/","title":{"rendered":"Ice Cubes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>People often ask me whether to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/care\/details\/water.html\">water<\/a> their orchids with ice cubes. While I know using ice can work for some orchids, I advise against it. Cold water can damage flowers, leaves, and roots. Most commonly sold orchids originate from the tropics, where they never experience anything close to freezing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/care\/details\/temperature.html\">temps<\/a>. Even orchids that come from high elevation jungles, like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/identify\/orchids\/masdevallia.html\">Masdevallias<\/a> and cool growing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/identify\/orchids\/dendrobium.html\">Dendrobiums<\/a>, don&#8217;t want cold water while they&#8217;re growing or blooming.<\/p>\n<p>While melting ice allows the orchid to slowly absorb water, two successive regular-temperature waterings given 10 minutes apart can accomplish the same. Also, ice cubes may not provide enough water to run through the pot and flush out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/care\/details\/fertilizer.html\">fertilizer<\/a> residues.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve been using ice successfully, it&#8217;s likely that you have a tough, modern orchid hybrid. However, even resilient hybrids may produce less blooms than normal because of the cold. For all plants, cold slows down metabolic processes that are essential for growth. If ice has been working for you, then don&#8217;t stop on my account. But otherwise, save the ice for your lemonade or cocktail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People often ask me whether to water their orchids with ice cubes. While I know using ice can work for some orchids, I advise against it. Cold water can damage flowers, leaves, and roots. Most commonly sold orchids originate from the tropics, where they never experience anything close to freezing temps. Even orchids that come [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-problems","category-watering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6494,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions\/6494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.aboutorchids.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}