Cattleya repotting - compacting media

[guccisimo85]

Do you find the lava rock retains enough moisture? I find mine are drying out quickly despite being at 60-70% humidity. Might be because I run a fan in the room too.

PS - rhizome clips are on the way!

Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts

Hahahaha, YES! I am gonna quote that


To the OP, I use a very similar mix to you and you cannot really contact it at all, all you could be doing is crushing your perlite and thus making it less effective and possibly creating dust

I would also recommend mechanical support and I use metal clips across the bottom of the plant. I have a lot of really tall orchids so I have to make sure they don’t want to topple over (huge heavy pots and heavy medium) and if they do fall, I want them to stay stable.
(It’s quite windy here and one of my dogs is a lizard chasing A-hole with no respect!!!

---------- Post added at 10:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:22 PM ----------



I actually Don’t use bark at all in my mix For catts so they can have more air and they don’t need to be reported...ever. Just dropped into a bigger pot

I use the bark for dens and phals in the mix but not catts

You could swap lava rock for the bark in my neighborhood and with my watering habits

[estación seca]

You can learn to grow orchids in almost anything. It makes sense at first to try lots of different methods, then settle on what best fits your climate, favorite plants and lifestyle.

Despite what people say, do try to learn to grow in packed sphagnum moss. Watering is so different from other media that you must keep the plants separate, and water on different schedules. But it allows much longer intervals between watering. I don't use it because it requires repotting every 2 years or so. I grow almost exclusively in LECA balls or pumice, so my media do not break down. But If I were not working I might switch to packed sphagnum.

[guccisimo85]

I have a few phals in spagnum moss at the moment. I splurged recently and reported them in the good stuff. I can’t believe what a difference it is compared to the moss they came in. Agreed, watering schedule is completely different! I do feel like with the New Zealand spagnum there is quite a bit of circulation.

Originally Posted by estación seca

You can learn to grow orchids in almost anything. It makes sense at first to try lots of different methods, then settle on what best fits your climate, favorite plants and lifestyle.

Despite what people say, do try to learn to grow in packed sphagnum moss. Watering is so different from other media that you must keep the plants separate, and water on different schedules. But it allows much longer intervals between watering. I don't use it because it requires repotting every 2 years or so. I grow almost exclusively in LECA balls or pumice, so my media do not break down. But If I were not working I might switch to packed sphagnum.

[SouthPark]

Yes. It is true. When it comes to DC watering his catts ----- we can say that the bark is equally as bad as his dog's bite.