[missann]

Hey, I was the first person to answer your question, and it was brought to my attention that I sounded like a jerk.. I am sorry for that. I didn't mean for it to sound that way. I will see if I can remember what I told you if you didn't have a chance to read it.

I reccommend the book "Ortho's All About Orchids" it is very informative and covers some very basic information like the questions you are asking. I would reccommend any new orchid owner reads a few books. It is easy to ask questions in a place like this, but I personally think that having all that knowledge at my fingertips where I can access it at any time and it is all in one place.

It sounds like your orchids are not getting enough water. If you are watering once a week, step it up to twice a week, wait a month or two, and if they still aren't improving, then step it up to three times a week. Wait another month or two.

I would not reccommend soaking your orchids all together. Sharing water, cutting tools, unsterilized pots etc, is liken to sharing needles with a junky because diseases, including viruses can be spread this way. Remember to sterilize your cutting tools etc between plants.

Um...again, sorry I sounded like a jerk. I sometimes forget that people have to be very careful when typing because text cannot convey mood, tone of voice etc.

Oh yeah, personally, I would not soak them. I think soaking for any other purpose besides disease treatment can get a novice like you or me into trouble. It is waaay to easy to forget that your plant is in the water because the phone rings or something else happens and you get distracted. Just water enough so that a lot of water runs out of the pots when you water. I always let the water run through for at least one minute, and I have never had the accident of built up fertilizer or water salts accumulating in my pots-and we have really hard water here.