Soaking orchids potted in bark

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by claypot

Interesting comments about Orchiata because it is not available any longer in the UK. Our staple these days is bark from Portugal which is hard and keeps open well in the pots. Keeping to the mantra that the objective is never to leave water in the pot after watering I don't see the point in soaking by immersion. In the wild, it rains and water passes over the roots and goes on down to the ground. Passing water through the pot is usually enough to turn the valamen from white to green.

This seems like an apples to oranges comparison just because in the wild environs for many of these plants it rains for a lot longer than 15 seconds when it does! For in the house culture the time spent not watering is a whole lot longer than the time spent watering, whether it be by a 15s time under the sink or 15 minutes soak. The plant is still going to be not under those conditions for the other 99% of the time, so if we're really trying to give them something close to their natural conditions, I'm thinking we want something that will create those the other 99.9% of the time, not something that will create them during the actual watering.

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

This seems like an apples to oranges comparison just because in the wild environs for many of these plants it rains for a lot longer than 15 seconds when it does! For in the house culture the time spent not watering is a whole lot longer than the time spent watering, whether it be by a 15s time under the sink or 15 minutes soak. The plant is still going to be not under those conditions for the other 99% of the time, so if we're really trying to give them something close to their natural conditions, I'm thinking we want something that will create those the other 99.9% of the time, not something that will create them during the actual watering.

Remember, when those epiphytic orchids get rained on for some number of hours, they still are also exposed to air - and have perfect drainage. (How well drained is the side of a tree???) And it's the air that is critical - they really want "humid air" rather than "sopping wet" . If you can saturate them in a soak where they are getting air at the same time (How??) it's fine.. but to just get water into the vicinity of the roots while having lots of air, running water through the pot does the job. (I never soak my bark, plants get water dumped on them for a few minutes and then they have the opportunity to dry out. It works under my growing conditions. Daytime humidity ranges from a marginal 50% or so down to dessiccating 20% occasionally, when I water more often.)