Hanging pots are overgrown by mold

[RavenTheJust]

Hello there,

I've been growing Phals since a few years now but dunking has always been a nuisance to me. It just takes so much time if one has a few orchids and also creates quite a mess.
With a cat and a toddler in our houshold windowsil pots are anyway not ideal. About three months ago I found out about haning pots.

They are made from specially treated clay and will let water through but just a tiny bit.
The orchid is bound on the outside of pot with a flexible thread and some sphagnum to hold water around the roots. I also added Hygrolon to hold sprayed water a bit better and prevent roots from getting "cold" because of the evaporation but I am not sure that it would be needed.

The good thing is that orchids hang and therefore cannot be knocked down and watering just involves adding a cup of desalted water to the pot every other day.

So much for the theory and in the beginning everything seemed to go well. New roots and leaves started growing and the Phals really seemed to like this sort of cultivation.

Now about two months in all pots have developed mold. It's sometimes quite significant. On some of the pots the plants are still fine but on others the mold has started to attack the roots and the sphagnum. Hence I think I have to stop this experiment but I find it very frustrating!

I don't know what I could've done differently. The mold started growing on the top of the pot first. This is the part that dries first because it's above the waterline. So not only the constantly wet parts are affected and having the pot to go "dry" once in a while wouldn't help.

I tried spreading some moss spores on the pot but the moss grows so slow that it cannot compete with the mold. Above the waterline (where the mold started) the moss will simply dry out since there is not enough water there. The manufacturer from Germany suggested that I should have moss grow on the pot before tying on the plants but that will takes months - seems impractical to me. Also they said the pots can be used right away and the moss is just for optical reasons.

What would you suggest? Fungicides?
It is a pain to take all seven plants off the pots now since it takes quite some time to fix them to the pots properly. But I won't have them all die because of root mold.
Then I somehow need to wash the pots to ever have a chance to reuse them - but how? I fear that the mold has completely penetrated the clay.

Any advice greatly appreciated!

[Ray]

It might just be me, but I don’t see any mold on those. What I do see is a bit of algae (expected) and possibly mineral deposits.

With all of the evaporation being on the outside of the pot, any dissolved minerals, whether they be from the water supply of nutrients you add, will end up there.

[DirtyCoconuts]

Those pots are interesting. Where are they from?

[camille1585]

I agree, that doesn't look like mold. If it's algae (so it seem brownish in the photo?) it's to be expected and shouldn't harm the roots. If you look up photos of swampsticks and other similar terracotta/ceramic systems you'll see that a lot of them have algae as well.

I'm curious if these systems even work in the long term, there are many photos of newly/recently attached orchids, but very little showing established plants...

Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts

Those pots are interesting. Where are they from?

He mentions they are from germany, and they look a lot like the Orchi-pots sold by Roelke Orchideeen, which I had considered buying and testing a couple years ago. www.roellke-orchideen.de

[Paul]

I concur with the others -- I see no signs of mold. If it is algae, as Cam mentioned, it shouldn't harm the plants. If it is a case of mineral deposits, then you will want to switch to pure water.

[RavenTheJust]

Thanks for your replies but this is mold - white fluffy stuff in the beginning that turns darkish green or black after a while. They all started as small colonies white and fluffy but they grew until everything was covered.
I have two aquariums I know algae when I see or smell them - this is unfortunately not algae, even though the pictures are no good unfortunately..

The white fluffy stuff also grows on the Hygrolon where I tied it to the pot.

It's also not mineral deposits since I only water with desalted water. That is pretty important for using these pots since tap water would create deposits to such a degree that it might harm the plants as well.

They are from Roellke - a really nice guy Mr. Roellke. His suggestion was to first let them overgrow with moss because that will keep other things away and I guess he is right. Problem might also be that I used too much Hygrolon, on the other hand it's worst where there is no Hygrolon so I am unsure.

@camille1585
There are nice pictures of longer cultivated pots in this article: Sorry-can't post you the link for the article since I am denied posting links. I'll send you a PM so maybe you may post it in your reply.
Edit: Can't do that either since your inbox is full!
He or she who is interested in the article should write me a PM

The article is in German which I am not sure that everybody here speaks but the pictures speak for themselves, I guess. The guy who wrote the article says he uses them since years and has over 80 orchids on these pots. He calls them Giesstöpfe - means "Watering-Pots"


Even he mentions mold but only in combination with stagnating air which I can exclude in this case. The pots hang in front of the window over the heating radiator. There is lots of warm air movement around them.

Today I cut all the orchids off and went back to bark substrate but it will not be the end of it. I'll have to figure out what to do. I will thoroughly clean the pots and test a few things. Maybe I pluck some moss from the forrest and tie it to the pot or moss-spores as Mr. Roellke suggested.
In the text Mr. Moenning suggest to leave them in the garden in the shade so moss will come by itself.

I never suspected these pots to be easy but I am still a bit surprised that all suffered from mold. Maybe I would've had more luck in summer. However once you have a stable micro-community on them I believe it's the closest you can come to a perma culture without a specific enclosure.

[camille1585]

Whoops, sorry about the full inbox and I sent you a PM before having seen this thread! You can still post the link, just don't use the insert link button. Simply copy paste it into the thread. I can then edit you post to make it a hyperlink.

I think I see the white stuff, now that you've described what to look for.

I was looking up some info on these sort of pots, and did come across a case of someone who gave them all away because she had a lot of problems with mold.

[RavenTheJust]

Last time I tried I couldn't post, even if the link was not inserted as hyperlink..

So let's try this again..
(Doesn't work - maybe like this->Watch out for X's in the URL)
httX://www.orchidee-wuerttemberg.de/docs/artikel/2011%20Heft%202%20M%C3%B6nning.pdf

Now it worked - I think the forum is checking for h t t p in a post..

Just for the ones who like to try it: I actually believe one could also use these ceramic air humidifiers that people hang from their heating radiators.


They have the same principle. But I don't know if they let enough water through..

[Orchid Whisperer]

Agree with others, this looks like algae or moss (green).

[SouthPark]

Ray already mentioned it ------ but that white fluffy powdery stuff could well be mineral deposits or salt deposits.

But if you suspect mold ----- then take some samples and look at them under a microscope - to see if you can see minerals/crystals --- or cells.