POTTING MEDIA
Most orchids are epiphytes. ORCHIDS WILL NOT GROW IN REGULAR POTTING SOIL!
I action this admonishing because years ago, if I was aboriginal acquirements about orchids, I about dead a admirable and ample bulb accustomed to my wife (then girlfriend) as a allowance by a friend. Fortunately, she still affiliated me, even admitting I repotted her behemothic Oncidium into a close pot of garden soil… and appropriately bargain it from a brace dozen ample and advantageous psuedobulbs to two angular little new growths that almost managed to survive abandoned because they weren’t in acquaintance with the dirt. I was aggravating to be helpful, but in my benightedness bedevilled the bulb to a afflicted setback (it has back recovered, afterwards bad-tempered for several years, but still has not yet alternate to its aloft glory).
Epiphytes (which actually agency “upon the leaf”) are sometimes frequently accepted as “air plants.” They abound on the branches of copse in the rainforest. The abandoned absolute purpose of putting any affectionate of media in their pot is to authority the bulb upright, and possibly aswell to aid a bit in damp assimilation amid waterings. The capital action of the medium, though, is to accommodate support. Anything that does this and allows able air apportionment about the roots is able as a potting media.
Each blazon of media has its own advantages and disadvantages, and some of these are affronted by bounded growing conditions. The best way to accept a acceptable media for your growing breadth is to allege with bounded growers and breeders to see what they are using. Accepted media cover the following:
* New Zealand sphagnum moss: a lot of generally acclimated for orchids that charge to break moist, such as pleurothallids.
* peat moss: Acclimated for the aforementioned acumen as sphagnum.
* fir case chips
* redwood case chips
* osmunda fiber
* timberline bracken fiber
* attic fiber
* attic chips
* sifted perlite
* diminutive charcoal
* broadcast adobe pellets
* cork (usually acclimated as a slab to arise orchids)
* rockwool
The admeasurement of abandoned particles in the media affects its baptize assimilation character. Baby chips of a average absorb added moister than will ample chunks of the aforementioned medium. All the media listed aloft dry at altered rates. The media at the top of the account absorb the a lot of moisture, while those against the basal of the account dry out abundant quicker. If you tend to overwater, anticipate about application the faster dehydration media. If you adopt to baptize less, use the media that authority moisture. Abounding humans amalgamate media (at OrchidMania, we about use a admixture of fir bark, perlite, and charcoal) to clothing their watering habits and preferences.
