Screw you moss!

[Saiva]

How do you water your plants with 100% moss?

I always grow my small Phals i 100% moss and it works better than bark for me. I usually plant them in a glass vase without any holes. Then i just pour a small amount of water in the vase and the moss distributes it itself. That way the moss just stays damp and not wet. If it gets too wet it will sink togehter and the roots starts to rot.

But then again, I grow in a climate with a quite low air humidity. :/

[ginnibug]

Saiva you really need the holes because you need to "flush" the growing media so you don't get any salt of mineral build up. Letting clean clear water run through the media helps with this. But then you let the moss dry out until it is just about crispy to the touch. The build up will happen over a long bit of time, it definitely takes a while but it will kill all your roots. Ginnibug

---------- Post added at 09:40 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:38 AM ----------

Sorry! Salt OR mineral build up NOT salt of mineral buildup.

[Saiva]

I've grown orchids like this for years and never had any problems with salt or mineral build up. And the roots look happier in the pots with moss than the ones growing in bark.

I repot them after about 2-3 years and switch moss. Not one dead root yet.

[The Mutant]

It could have to do with the water quality that your orchids don't suffer the "mineral and salt buildup death" me thinks.

[Saiva]

Probably. But my parents live in an area with harder water and it works well for them too (they have about 8 °dH and Umeå about 2-3 °dH). Perhaps it doesn't build up enough salt and minerals in the moss before I repot them.

[terryros]

Success with moss appears to depend on using good quality moss (New Zealand high grade is probably still the best, but more expensive), not watering until the moss has dried out to the right amount for the genera you are growing (read you can't just water on a regular schedule, you need to check the moss), and it may depend on not letting the pH of the moss get too low with the use of periodic top dressing of something like pellitized dolomitic limestone. I am just finishing my annual repotting of all of my plants, all of them in moss, and all roots look very good.

[bballr4567]

Like others have said, it just depends on your environment. It just takes too long for moss to dry out in our apartment. When it takes almost two weeks and its not packed in the pot, there is nothing to do but change it up.

[shadytrake]

Don't forget proper preparation of the moss helps too. If you sterilize the moss, you kill the fungal spores that reside in the moss. Several of the successful Phal growers here sterilize their moss prior to potting. You can use a pressure cooker or an autoclave.

One of the reasons we let the moss dry out is to retard the growth of the spores which rots the roots. If you kill the spores by sterilizing the roots, then the moss can stay more humid for longer periods.

It sounds silly and overly anal, but I tried it with my flask seedlings and I am getting amazing root growth now and no issue with rotting roots. The pots stay damp. I do not let them get crispy.

But as several have mentioned, we all have our own growing conditions.

Good luck!