| Andy is fantastic and very knowledgable and I've bought lots of fantastic plants from him. He does make a good point about any pests or diseases that a plant might have beign transfered from one to the next via bucket-of-water. That is certainly a possibility. However, in conditions less than the ideal conditions found in a nursery, and with lives, habits, and growing areas that don't allow for daily watering by spraying, other methods can be employed. It also depends on what kind of spraying we're talking about. I would guess that for vast majority of home growers, spraying means using a spritzer-type hand sprayer while commercial growers have large drenching sprayers or overhead sprayers that give the mounts a good soaking. Further to the point, out household sprayers don't drench a plant like a soaking rain would. We spend 30-40 seconds spraying contrasted with the 30-40 minutes of soaking rain a plant would receive in the wild. There's a big difference inthe volume of water there. With my mounted orchids, using a bottle sprayer, even if I spray until water runs off, the inside of the mount (inside the sphag and tree fern) where the roots are, doesn't get wet.
Now to the point of watering then watering again later with fertilizer, this is a good way to fertiize. I hear this recommendation for potted orchids as well, to water them then go through and water again with fertilized water. It reduces the likelihood of fert burn to the roots.
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