Someone refuses to grow in the pot

[tmoney]

hey there!

interestingly our experiences have been a bit different than yours, mateo. the bark mix and weekly good, long soak method of culture has proven most successful for our phals. and we have relatively high humidity. a couple caveats tho, in that we incorporate leca into the bark mix, and we have admittedly reduced the sphag content due to some plants staying wet too long, and premature media decay in a couple cases. and we pulverize the moss the ensure no big pieces that stay wet long. but also, contrary to what we usually read online, we pot that media very loosely and have decent air pockets/empty space in the pot. like, in my head the perfect pot job is a plant that is essentially mounted, but is stabilized by the media and can go a week without direct water.

a couple young plants (and one notable old specimen plant) did die after transitioning to this media after their roots died. so yeah, it isn’t 100% perfect yet, but the success rate is over 80% for phals and we are happy with that.

it has taken us a bit to figure out s/h for phals, and our success rate (although much lower sample size) is around 40%. we have found better success with leaving the reservoir basically empty for a week, a light watering to wet everything just once a week. by contrast our paph in s/h we water as you describe above.

we are just now coming back to trying full moss, tightly packed. signs are so far ok, but we have just dabbled water on average about every 2 weeks. HUGE water savings if we can get moss dialed in....