Growing YOUNG Cattleyas 🌱🌸 - new trends, innovative practices and best practices a

[Shadeflower]

I'm a big fan of lava stones or pumice which is just a finer grade of lava stone. The reason I like it is because it's reusable so when I repot I can leave the old media without disturbing roots. Plants suffer from switching from bark to inorganic media initially but it's worth it for me. It's not for everyone and if you want to try something different always try with one plant first to see how it goes before switching your whole collection. I find hybrids adapt to inorganic far better. Pumice dries incredibly fast so again it might not be suited for everyone.
Good grade bark will last a long time and gives amazing results too, the secret is not what media you use, I have literally used toilet paper as substrate, it works. It just dries way too fast. The secret is how wet the substrate keeps the roots. Roots never want to be soaking wet and they never want to be bone dry. That is my aim with any substrate, it doesn't matter too much what is in it, if it can evenly distribute humidity around the pot to keep roots hydrated, able to breathe and not too wet then they will do well.

[estación seca]

I posted my comment above about sphagnum before you posted photos of your plants. They are larger than the hypothetical seedlings I was talking about. Seedlings smaller than yours do very well in moss.

At the size of yours they can do very well in moss once you learn how to water. They can also do well in almost any other medium that provides plenty of air at the roots. Do not let Cattleya seedlings dry out for very long. I have observed they use more water than most other orchid seedlings of the same size.

[Abe1997]

Originally Posted by SADE2020

Woow, Cats in sphagnum? What could be the logic of that, taking I consideration they need lots of air circulation and oxygen? I am asking been naive in this regard ..

I've been to Brazil and Tahiland and they don't deal with sphagnum. However I've seen this post in the Richmond.com and here are 2 very cool discussions 1st from last year and the 2nd from 11yrs ago

Maybe I should pack one in moss

I grow all my adult Cattleya in sphagnum moss. I only use the high quality stuff from New Zealand. I’ve found no other media provides me with such consistently great results. I grow everything from dowiana, rex, warscewiczii to even some walkeriana and other bifoliates. The trick is, like anything else in life, practice. Growing in moss has its own watering approach different to that of other media. We tend to think sphagnum moss creates a vacuum, when it actually is quite a breathable material. Especially when packed into clay pots, there is more than enough air exchange to support healthy root growth. I will say this, roots that grow in sphagnum moss are adaptably different than those exposed to different media. They adapt to the conditions in the moss. I have had consistently better flowering and growth since switching a couple of years ago. Old pseudo bulbs that wrinkled in other medium fattened up and the thickness of bulbs and quality of newer growth is unmatched by plants of the same species I did not switch over. One warscewiczii I switched a year ago has 8 new growths coming in at once, before it averaged 2 per season.

This is what I meant in my earlier post. Conventional wisdom dictates that Cattleya need a drier medium, one that can dry out quickly and allow the roots to totally dry. I never allow my moss to get crispy, in fact, they do well in our summer long monsoon season where days without rain are few and far between. I cannot give enough praise to sphagnum. It has been a complete game changer for my collection. I try not to get past 5in pots with it. For my needs, I never let a plant get larger than this anyway, I tend to divide into smaller pieces when they no longer fit tightly into 4-5in pots. For mature plants this is more than enough room for a good amount of pseudo bulbs.

[SADE2020]

Hi Abe,

Wow thanks for sharing and great details.

Going back to the 1-2-3 of 1st post and adding the information of this last post; I would like to understand if you have switch from moss to SH or vise versa, and if you did why and how?. If you get a young plant now, what would you do?

Any photo 2 examples that could be share whenever you have time 🙏

---------- Post added at 10:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:58 AM ----------

Good quality Sphagnum moss is only the New Zealand or Chilean in consider good as well ?

[isurus79]

I’ve actually met several successful Floridians growing Cattleyas in spag. Mauro Rosim is a well known Brazilian who grows and breeds Cattleyas and used to post here quite often. He also grows in spag with great success. I’ve always wondered, how do you keep root disturbance hating Cattleyas in a media that needs to be changed every other year?

[rbarata]

I have never had any "real" seedling, just young Catts but I would like to add something that I think was not addressed before.
I categorize the use of sphagnum in 3 categories of function:

- When I want an even moisture in the medium, I mix it with the medium (good for plants that like to be moist).

- To those that like to get dry (or almost) in between waterings, there are two more functions:

- Sphagnum not mixed but used in a layer at the bottom of the pot. Acts as a moisture source keeping the medium airy. Suitable for clay pots.

- A layer of sphagnum at the top of the medium. Acts as a barrier that prevents excessive evaporation of the medium. Suitable for plastic pots.

[Fairorchids]

It is important to recognize several separate factors:

---------- Post added at 07:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:52 AM ----------

Pls ignore previous, it got posted prematurely.

A. As plant size progresses, the cultural requirements change (both light intensity, temperature and moisture requirements):

• Tiny seedlings from flask.
• Small seedlings (3-12 months out of flask).
• Seedlings (ranging up to NBS)
• Young plants (BS to having bloomed once or twice)
• Mature to specimen size plants.

At the 'tiny' stage, I only give Catt seedlings about 1200 footcandles light, I try to keep the temperature 5-10 deg F higher, and I grow them in near pure spaghnum moss. As they grow larger, I gradually increase the light level, but they stay in mostly moss up through 3" pot size.
Then they graduate into seedling size bark/charcoal/perlite mix, but clay pot.
Then into 50/50 seedling size & adult size.
5"-7" pot size, adult size bark/charcoal/perlite.
8" size & larger, I use clay nuggets (LECA), in either a pot or basket.

B. Growers choice of medium.
All of the mediums mentioned in this thread are suitable, as long as you vary your watering schedule accordingly. More on this below!

C. Environmental conditions (ranging from outdoor in Thailand & Hawaii, to windowsill in Manhattan or Stockholm). When plants are exposed to 3-6 months of heavy rains, you must grow in a very open and non-rotting medium. The flip side is of course, that you must water copiously during the dry season.

Given the interaction between the various factors & grower's choices, it is impossible to make rules for other growers to follow. We each have to work out the optimum solution for our conditions.

Now for the heresy:
We have all heard 'Cattleyas should dry out between waterings'. That phrase must have been coined at a time when growers were rotting the roots, due to use of a fine medium. In my opinion, it should be discarded (or at the very least modified to clarify the situation).

When I visit orchid societies as a speaker, I notice that many of the Cattleyas on the show tables are not grown particularly well. In most cases the older pseudobulbs show significant wrinkling, which is a clear sign of lack of adequate water.

These days most growers use a coarse medium, so the water largely runs right through. If you only water once a week (or, as one my customers admitted on Saturday: every two weeks), you are not watering enough!

In my greenhouse, I water heavily twice a week in winter, and every other day in summer. When I bring in Cattleyas purchased from other nurseries, I can see a marked difference in the new growths, both in terms of PB height, and PB 'plumpness'.

[JungleJo]

Originally Posted by SADE2020

Woow, Cats in sphagnum? What could be the logic of that, taking in consideration they need lots of air circulation and oxygen? I am asking been naive in this regard ..

I've been to Brazil and Thailand and they don't deal with sphagnum. However I've seen this post in the Richmond.com and here are 2 very cool discussions 1st from last year and the 2nd from 11yrs ago

Maybe I should pack one in moss

I can say that sphagnum is used quite a lot in Brazil, especially in nurseries. Most of the plants I buy have been grown in it. I only use it for bulbophyllums.

I have seen plenty of cattleya seedlings growing in tree fern.

[Ray]

I don’t know if it still exists, but back in the early 80’s, I visited a cut flower nursery in between Campinas and Cosmopolis, BR, and they had acres of catts growing on slat benches of live sphagnum under ~50% lath shading.

Kim is “singing my song” with his “heresy” about watering. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to see cattleyas in the wild, they are dripping most of the time. Folks don’t result in root rot if they “over-water”, they do so when they “under-air” their plants.

As a brief aside, folks are having a hard time getting quality sphagnum right now, so for ex-flask seedlings in tiny pots, loose, uncompressed Grodan rock wool mini-cubes are a reasonable substitute.

[InnaK]

I am on my second quest to grow dowiana to bloom size plant. These year I acquired few 4n seedlings of dowiana v. aurea from H&R, half expecting some of them to die. They arrived in net pots, and one small community pot that needed replanting. I kept them outside right upon arrival, with good exposure to sun in mornings and afternoons. While the plants were doing well, the roots outside of the net pots got dry under the sun. My answer to this problem was to place net pots into slightly larger plastic pots, and filling the gap with perlite chunks. The plants definitely love this setup, I can see new roots sprouting between perlite, and I already have second round of new growths on all larger plants while small ones doubled in size. The plant in clay pot is a cross between dowiana v. aurea 4N and Mareeba Tiger Dark 4N. The latter is in mix of LECA, large bark chunks and charcoal, it responded well to this mix. However, I understand the fact that while these mixes work well in hot , humid and fairly wet NJ summers, and we have been having rather wet summer overall, I would have to get creative once the plants go back in the house.
I have tried spagnum moss set up for young plants, and while it worked well during cold months in the house, I experienced a loss of new growths during summer, as the moss would not get a change to dry for a month at a time or more, due to combination of rains and high humidity. I can see that spagnum moss would work well in controlled environment, but my regimen is to to take plants outside for summer so I stay away from moss in cattleya pots.