Self-watering pots?? Safe??

[Benny@12784]

Has anyone used self watering pots (with the cotton string) for their phals? I’m have an underwatering issue in my dry climate and hope this can help.

[Dimples]

I haven’t and I don’t think I’ve seen others use them on here, at least not often enough to remember. Semi-hydro seems to be the preferred “self watering” method. What medium would you use? Bark wouldn’t have the wicking capacity needed to distribute the water evenly around the pot and I would think sphagnum may stay too wet with a self watering system.

Have you tried adding a plastic topper to the pots to minimize evaporation? Ray has info here about making one for a semi-hydro setup but it could be used with more traditional setups too.

[estación seca]

Others here have reported trying wicking pots. As Dimples mentioned they don't work well unless the particles in the media are good at becoming wet (hygroscopic), and there is not much space between the particles. Medium to coarse orchid bark generally is not hygroscopic and the spaces are not large enough to be filled with water, so bark won't wick water up from the base very much.

Ray has written he came up with the idea of S/H when he had to travel a lot. The reservoir permits longer watering intervals, but it is harmful to let it go dry more than very rarely, because the roots are adapted to that always-moist environment.

I seem to remember Ray wrote was growing in a humid greenhouse at that time. He was able to go a week between waterings. I have discovered in a lower-humidity environment I need to water plants in S/H every few days or the reservoir runs dry.

Sphagnum does retain water. Many growers put a little bit of sphagnum into the pot to help with this. Too much risks suffocating Phal roots. OB member rbarata has written of putting three small balls of sphagnum at the periphery of a pot full of bark, to retain water in the pot longer. You could probably find these posts with the Search feature in the top maroon menu.

But water evaporation from sphagnum also cools the pot, so somebody growing in a cool environment needs to think about that.

With epiphytic orchids the air at the roots must be preserved, so large pieces of medium are necessary. Unfortunately this means they need to be watered more often than many other plants. There's no way around that.