Who is using seramis? Please share your epxperiences.

[reptilegrrl]

Thanks Ray, but I already have. All of my orchids are in inert mediums.

---------- Post added at 12:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 AM ----------

Originally Posted by SundayGardener

I'm a beginner with orchids, and I have the seramis Orchid mix (larger granules with Kiwi bark). I'm using it for a few phals and oncidiums (which also get a little spagh). I started out with the bags of the straight seramis in a much smaller size and could not find a good use for it. It's too small for pots with openings and doesn't leave enough air flow. I do use it in place of pebbles in humidity trays.

I have not developed the knack of knowing how much water and when with seramis. For a beginner, it is not as easy as I hoped. It's easy to overwater, and then if you underwater I believe it can have a drying effect on roots. Overall, I prefer bark with pumice or other chunky materials.

I agree, it can really smother a plant. I have only one plant in pure seramis, it's a tiny, thirsty backbulb in a very tiny pot. It's doing ok, because the pot is small enough to dry fairly quickly.

I think maybe the best way to use the granules is as a minimal additive to other media. I have a few that I worry there's too much seramis.

It has been very effective, as a small sprinkle in a pot of growstones. The growstones don't hold as much water as seramis, and on their own they dry quickly. They are chunky. Without the seramis I was watering every 2-3 days. Seramis absorbs more and stays wet longer, so it seemed to mediate the drying of the growstones. The roots stayed green for 2 weeks and the plant has new roots and a new leaf growing.

[flowerpower]

I've used it in a similar way.

I found it contains a tremendous amount of water and it took me some time to get used to it. Mine was the fine grade seramis.

I had an oncidium intergeneric (a very thirsty type) in pure seramis and it had no issues at all with root decay. It quite liked it but if the seramis stays too wet then algae can build on it. It grows a fibrous algae layer that does not seem to happen with LECA.

I have also used it mixed with LECA on a cattleya. I would say the mix was 80% LECA and 20% seramis. A lot of the seramis was so fine it eventually made its way out of the bottom of the pot. I find LECA holds a good amount of water and I added seramis just to add a bit of irregular shapes to the LECA so that it might help lock the LECA beads a little bit (mine are very round).

I have a succulent in seramis and it seems very happy. I think I prefer LECA for orchids though. I have seen it added to S/H which I do a lot of. I don't know if this would add any value to me because I think it would just reduce the air spaces in the LECA and promote algae. Most of my bag of seramis went unused but I am planning to repot the LECA/seramis cattleya next year. I might try a mix of LECA/lava rock/seramis. I would rather have the large grade seramis but it seems difficult to get hold of.

[SundayGardener]

As it turns out, I will have some experience to post in a few months. About 7 months into orchid mania, I have mealybugs and what feels like a billion orchids to rescue.

Everyone has been repotted in the larger chunk seramis that comes with bark. This is what I had handy.

Miss Orchid Girl recommends soaking and rinsing it first, but I didn't want to soak it indoors (bug paranoia) and it's too cold outside. So there may be issues with clay dust.

Also, she loves the fast wicking that seramis provides, but when you get bark in the mix, there isn't much wicking from the bark, so you have to water strategically.

I tend to overwater, and for whatever reason I love to soak orchids for 10 minutes or so instead of watering. We'll see how this all turns out. I'm hoping the chunks of seramis will act like spaghnum moss and sort of maintain even moisture. To be honest, so far everything that I planted in the small granule seramis died

I won't make any broad conclusions, because in between the bugs, the applications of Bayer-3 and the reportting the orchids have plenty to be unhappy about.

[Chemtiger]

I realize that this post is quite old, but there is a pretty small amount of information out there on this material, so here goes:

I have both types of Seramis, the larger chunks and the granulated form. I haven’t found a lot of use for the granulated version, so once I soak the heck out of it (I clean the dust from both types of Seramis the same way: 3-4 times in a five-gallon bucket, with fresh water each time; do NOT pour the resulting water down a drain, as it looks like it could form a solid plug; I leave it in the pail with enough RO water to keep it completely “full” of water and ready for use) and I use the saturated granules as a sort of “liner” at the bottom of 1020 trays, where I place a second 1020 tray that is often used for microgreens (shallow with slots) and then I put my potted orchids on top of the whole mess, all of which is on top of a wire shelf with a relatively thick piece of cardboard, with a seedling heat mat, and then it’s all UNDER a T8 strip of full-spectrum LEDs. A big expenditure for what’s essentially a “humidity tray” but I had to do something with the granulated Seramis to create some sort of utility for it, so I can “justify” the price of the product. Rating? Fail.

Now, the larger Seramis granules, these I really do like to use! They were insanely expensive, but now that I’ve dialed in a way to use them—mixed with regular LECA—I use them as a sort of “normal” orchid potting mix, except the components in my particular mix are quasi-inorganic... I just keep them in separate five gallon pails that I keep topped up with RO water, and I take out what I need from each whenever I pot up a new orchid. I don’t use this mix exclusively, because it REALLY has a learning curve, but as I continue to have more success with it, I’ll keep using it. I have a LOT of it, because I decided that I’d rather place one LARGE order rather than multiple smaller ones to save money on shipping, so I have not even opened all of the Seramis, because I use it in about a 1:5 ratio (by dry volume) with LECA, and I have two sizes of LECA that I’ve separated with a homemade “sieve” (please don’t laugh) because I want to try to have a bit more control over how “airy” I can make my mix. Overall, I like the flexibility it adds to my use of LECA but to be honest, Ray’s right, and S/H is far easier, and probably a better choice, especially for my “humid subtropical” climate. Also, since the Seramis tends to stay wet for a LOT longer than the rest of the LECA, it’s really tough to prevent algae from showing up when light is added to the mix, so I put a layer of plain LECA on the surface of the pot, just enough to cover any Seramis that’s below.

I must admit that I like to grow my orchids in “non-traditional” media, like polystyrene (I cut up the trays that meat and the like are sold with, plus I use polystyrene packing peanuts, except I use it as the only type of medium in the pot) and EVA foam (yes… chopped-up yoga blocks, as well as cut up craft foam), because the orchids don’t seem to mind. I actually have three 6-packs of various species of Phalaenopsis seedlings, and I’m considering doing some non-scientific experiments but I’m not sure that I’m quite ready to potentially murder 6 Sedirea (Phalaenopsis) japonicas yet…stay tuned. [sorry for hijacking the post; I feel like I should be wearing a button that says, “Ask me what I grow (read: try to grow) my orchids in today!” Oh, and sorry for that poor sentence structure!]