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Originally Posted by here_butnot
Hey all,
Dustin here. Some of you know my blog - herebutnot.com.
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Hi Dustin, just wanted to say you majorly influenced my thinking on plants. Your posts really crystallized my understanding of my experience with growing orchids and other plants at home in my living room. Thanks a lot. I regularly check out your site. I am glad to find you here, I try to avoid facebook and I always wanted to ask you a question. :-)
The question is about your potting media choices. I have never noticed you mentioning vermiculite in your writings, which I find odd. It has about double or more the water retention of perlite and dries a bit slower, but much lower water retention than that of peat, and correspondingly much higher oxygenation than peat as well. So it seems like it would be a good option for plants like Macodes and Ludisia that need high moisture but also high aeration at their roots.
I recently was motivated by your posts on the Macodes to buy three different Macodes seedlings (petola, petola gold, and sanderiana) and instead of using your mud-mix (50% peat/50% perlite) and frightened by the high sphag option - I altered the mud-mix by cutting the peatmoss in half and replacing it with vermiculite. I fear the cold, dark, damp part of the year here in Amsterdam is too damp for that much peat so after some experimentation with alternates I picked vermiculite as a substitute. Too early to tell if that was a horrible mistake but my Ludisia is in a similar mix and it seems happy.
Is there a specific reason you don't use vermiculite for your plants? Or is it just because? Given how common a soil amendment it is it always struck me as an odd omission from someone as thorough and scientific as you are.
Thanks again for the great articles on your blog, its been a great motivator and education. I really think you made me a much better grower, and a much braver grower. "high humidity" requirements no longer scare me. :-)
Nice!!
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