best media for Phals

[Arenalbotanicalgarden]

Originally Posted by The Orchid Boy

This is my favorite phal mix:
7 parts medium fir bark
2 parts sphagnum moss
1 part charcoal
1 part small lava rock (you can substitute perlite although lava rock is preferred)

For me, this is a perfect mix. It dries out evenly and doesn't dry out too fast or too slow.

I also pot some of my phals in sphagnum moss with charcoal and perlite added.

Ditto, kid. Also use a slotted clay pot and clean(smoothe) the slots with a pocket knife.
If the sharp edges are still there the roots will tear when it's time to re-pot.Not really a problem but why chance it ?

[Leafmite]

In the summer I water nearly every day but in the winter, just once a week. I have two noID phals and some species and they really do great. You do have to stake the phals when first moving into lava rock so their tender growing tips aren't harmed by the roughness of the rock. Nearly all my orchids are in lava rock or mounted. The vanilla and jewel orchid are the exceptions.

[Vanda lover]

I agree with Bud. I usually mix my own with a little of everything and that works well. I put seedlings in Sphag, and also anything that is in a net pot. My vandas love sphag and charcoal in net pots.

[The Mutant]

I'll try posting again. I wrote this really long and extremely intelligent comment yesterday (the good part is that you guys can't check ) but I got kicked out of the system when I tried to post it.

I've had some of my Phals for at least five years, but I'm still a newbie because I haven't really tried to find information on how to care for them properly. This is what's different now. Now I'm very concerned about how to treat them the best way possible which means reading articles about them as well as more experienced orchid growers suggestions and tips. I consider the last two invaluable for me as a beginner.

At the moment I'm experimenting a bit with the media. I have some Phals potted in a mixed media bought at the florist's shop (I had two - one was a mixture of pine bark and coconut fibers and the other pine bark, coconut fibers and tiny pieces of sphagnum) , I have some potted in pine bark only, and some in a mixture of pine bark and sphagnum (the smaller Phals).

I plan to make my own mix since I didn't like the quality of the pre-mixed media. In some bags it was very deteriorated and moldy, while perfectly fine in others. For my own future mix I've ordered pine bark large and perlite. I also have sphagnum at home which could come in handy.

I got logged out again but was clever this time and copied my comment! Bwahahaha! Eat that you stupid what-ever-it-is that insist on logging me out if I'm inactive for a certain amount of time.

[Discus]

Oh, the loss of long posts to forums... man, that's annoying. I often copy all the text into the clipboard before clicking the Post/Submit button, just in case...!