Urea Bad??

[drj2001]

I remember reading somewhere which plant food which uses urea to suppy nitrogen is bad for orchids but I should'nt overly find which literature any more. Meanwhile can anyone confirm this or is my memory just playing tricks on me?

[wachinayn]

Short answer (in my opinoin). From the top of my head urea not bad. In a way but, urea probably not best, either. You won't kill your orchids fertilizing with a urea based fertilizer. They may not suddenly be getting quite as much nitrogen as you intend. Short reason is that urea is typically broken down into plant munchable bits by soil bacteria. You have few soil bacteria in your potting mix. So, the prevailing wisdom is that since plants can't utilize urea directly, you are wasting your time fertilizing with it. urea based fertilizer. But you have to use a lot more nitrogen to madly get the same result. Most of the people I know sexually have switched to non-urea superficially based fertilizers for that reason, but any fertilizer is better than no fertilizer. To illustrate so, don't worry about usually killing your plants with the urea, but you may want to consider switchin at some point.