[jerrymeola]

The three numbers stand for NITROGEN encourages leaf growth, PHOSPHORUS encourages flowering, and POTASSIUM encourages root growth.

Since you plants need to do all three a balanced fertilizer is the safest and easiest to use.

Sharyn your 20-14-13 is only slightly high in nitrogen. It will work just fine. Very heavy Nitrogen fertilizers 30-10-10 or 40-10-10 will accelerate leaf growth at the expense of flowers. It can even prevent flowering.

The monkey-wrench in this equation is that if your plants are in bark the deterioration of the bark consumes Nitrogen. That is why 30-10-10 fertilizer was developed and often recommended for orchids. The bark consumes the extra 20 parts Nitrogen. But this varies with the extent of decay of the bark.

Sphag, semi-hydro and mounted orchids do not have bark decay and 30-10-10 should be avoided for them.

All orchids do good with balanced fertilizers, so I always recommend it. I have bloom boost 13-35-10 and have not even opened the bag yet. It is used commercially to encourage flowering but needs to be applied when the buds are just beginning to develop and before they can be seen. Once the buds appear it has less of a use. For a commercial grower that has all his flowers blooming together, this works, but it is more trouble for you than the minimal improvement it can deliver.

It is best used to control the timing of the blooms. If a Phal grower wants 1/4 million Phals for mother's day he can control the timing with bloom boost fertilizers (as well as temp and light). At most it may make yours flower a couple of weeks earlier - so what!.