Packing Peanuts
 

This is not a secret or anything, but I didn't see much discussion on this topic on the board so I thought I would bring it up.

After seeing packing peanuts utilized on a lot of plants I have purchased from respected growers, I started experimenting with them. I find them incredibly useful. In addition to being free, they have helped mitigate my biggest orchid weakness, overpotting.

I basically use them in the center of all my pots now, draping the roots over them. The roots grow into them but they don't retain water, keeping the center of the pot less soggy. Reduces the amount of expense bark and sphag. Seems like a great way to reduce cost and root rot while recycling a bulky non biodegradable material.

Does anyone else utilize peanuts? Any tips?

I used to do this too and it's a great idea, but when was the last time you received something packaged in peanuts? Used mine up a long time ago.

There is some discussion of it in the Potting section and in the Cattleya section that got me interested.

And, yeah, same here about finding peanuts.
I was sure I had some and searched attic and found nothing.
Fortunately, I found them on Repotme, 2 quarts for $7.

I repotted a baby Cattleya about 3 weeks ago and put 2 inches in the bottom of the pot and Cattleya mix for the remaining.
It is too soon to know if it is working but seems like a good experiment.

One other thing...if you like a touch of the grape, keep the corks as they are good for the bottom of the pots.

Be careful with them. Some are made from starch. They collapse into sticky slime when wet.

The cornstarch ones can be used to construct 3D models/objects. If you get them wet strategically you can glue them together with just a little water. Fun for kids of all ages.

Definitely smart to test them before use!

What a great idea!

My nuts come mostly from delivered packaged products and I also use them when repotting. I save them and cardboard boxes to bring to Waldor Orchids here in NJ when I shop. They're happy to get them. The biodegradable nuts are made of a corn product (I've been told) and dissolve easily and obviously not suitable for repots.

I built a pretty large sailing ship out of them in high school, but it never made it out of dry dock. :D

in some of my plants peanuts were at the bottom of all the pots and the roots looked really good. I soon adopted the peanuts in the bottom of the pot routine. I keep the peanuts from who ever sends them to me.

dont buy the ones from U-Haul they are corn starch and melt with water bec they are meant to be
bio degradable :)

I avoid foam peanuts in the pot altogether. If your plants grow better with them, it suggests you’re using too deep of a pot and/or your mix is too moisture retentive.

Packing peanuts were more commonly discussed in orchid forums before they were mostly replaced by paper and air-filled plastic as packing materials. They are excellent, as you have discovered. Another method that was common was putting a small pot upside down in the middle-bottom of a pot.

It is really difficult to find that perfect potting medium for orchids. I use lava rock for many of my orchids and, lately NZ sphagnum moss. The moss has become quite expensive so I am going to try something different when the orchids needed up-potted/new medium.

Interesting... I have used styrofoam peanuts for many years and had several big trash bags in attic. These days ,however, they seem to have faded away from the packing purpose they were initially used for. I shopped around and wound up buying a 20 cubic foot bag from a commercial packing material wholesaler (33$). I now have enough to share with orchid friends and to last me several lifetimes. Will start using them in most of my potted plants and even hanging baskets for big cattleyas. Using net pots, chunky media and styrofoam bottoms allows me to grow my plants outside for most of the year and lets the plants enjoy the Florida rain.
They alwo work very well with moss in my phals and due to price of moss, I will be changing media on phals and do not want to reuse old styrofoam peanuts.

Given that these styrofoam "peanuts" are getting hard to find, here's another approach for keeping the middle of the pot from being too wet/airless. Invert a small net basket in the middle of the pot, drape roots over it. It prevents the medium from collecting in the middle of the pot, so you end up with a little air pocket. For larger plants, you can use a larger basket, or even a solid pot if it has enough air holes. It's the concept that counts... keep fresh air in the center of the pot. The "how" part has mulitple options.

I do NOT care for packing peanuts in orchid pots. It makes the plant top heavy, so it falls over when watered with a hose. This has led to my 'Rule #1':

If I find packing peanuts in a pot, I stop buying from that vendor.

doesn't anyone use styrofoam packing material?
 

Unless they've stopped shipping with it, I've always saved the styrofoam shipping materials for electronics and other items, break them into small pieces and use that for my orchids. Really hoping that hasn't been discontinued in packaging things :(

Every orchid grower has their own way tp use potting media and I find that's what works for me in my environment. My potted plants benefit from using these styrofoam peanuts in that I reduce the amount of media needed, I increase root air capacity and extend the life of the media as it dries quicker.
I grow outside in North Fla with a frugal shade house make of 4 T posts and 50 percent shade cloth and my cultural challenge scenario is daily downpours for weeks on end. This is frequent in our summers and orchids LOVE rain. Until I can build a shade house that protects from rain I will continue with current methodology.

I admit that, personally, I am an aesthete when it comes to potting. If I am going to put an orchid in a pot, the way the pot looks and is presented inside and out matters quite a bit to me. I also like to use antique or other fully closed terracotta pots. So, synthetic materials like peanuts and marbles, and methods like semi-hydro have never appealed to me. Although I cannot deny how useful peanuts probably are. It just goes to show how what is "natural" is not always what a plant prefers, given a choice. And I'd be curious to know whether people have had more success with different colors of peanuts - because the pink peanuts have an antistatic chemical added to prevent the buildup of static electricity.

When I pot into a deep pot I layer the bottom with coarsely ground charcoal, then, a layer of large chunks of cork that have been dusted with charcoal powder (biochar if I can get it). On top of that go large and airy fir bark and 20-40% charcoal mix. With small amounts of moss used for positioning and water retention if necessary.

The cork functions as the packing peanuts do, essentially. Cork is mostly made out of suberin, a biopolymer (eg a natural plastic). And is relatively inert and resists degradation. Not nearly as well as expanded polyurethane closed-cell foam (which is what peanuts are made out of) but, I imagine that in the future we will have new types of media to work with.

First, Welcome!

Out of curiosity... what types of orchids do you grow? My concern with using a relatively valuable pot is that for many (even most) orchids, when they're "happy" the roots can be rather aggressive, and may stick to the pot surface (or cram themselves in so tightly that the plant is well stuck in). (I do like terracotta for its water-wicking properties, as well as weight for top-heavy plants) This is true especially for unglazed surfaces characteristic of terracotta. I have had plenty of instances where I had to choose between destroying roots or destroying the pot. I have always come down on the side of whacking the pot and preserving roots. That's not a hard decision for a cheap, generic terracotta pot. But I'd hate to do that to a pot that I had spent real money for (or something that I cared about) Mostly I don't care what the pots look like, but if I do want to display a plant, I will drop the plant (cheap pot and all) into the decorative pot, knowing that I can easily remove it. How do you approach the issue?

Thank you for the warm welcome, Roberta. (Once I get the
hang of things I'll set up my profile more fully)

I grow species almost exclusively. Oeceoclades are my primary interest. Which, being terrestrial, are less prone to root adhesion concerns.

But I do have several other plants of mixed genera which are epiphytic, and for those, I usually mount to cedar. But some I pot as well. I like to use a very large diameter (10"+) low, wide pot so that it takes relatively long time for the roots to reach the unglazed surface, and/or, I can catch and repot or mount before they do. This is probably an unorthodox and in most cases temporary solution but it works for my setup and aesthetic concerns. I avoid tearing roots off of things whenever possible.

Now I was given a brassavola in rough shape, and decided to place in an antique unglazed upright pot. I coated the interior of the pot with powdered graphite. My hope is that the graphite will be non-harmful to the roots, but also close and smooth out many of the porous holes in the pots surface that the roots and their glue-like substance grow into, deterring adhesion, while still allowing the passage of water. It's a bit of an experiment.

-Florian

An interesting experiment, for sure. You definitely need to keep an eye on it if you value the pot. Brassavolas tend toward wild roots - I mostly gave up on mounts, put them in wood baskets with little or no medium. (Think of those as three-dimensional mounts) Both roots and growths go wherever they feel like. They definitely like having their roots go "wherever", with lots of air. Where do you live? Do you grow indoors, or greenhouse or??? (I live in coastal southern California, a very benign climate, so grow mostly outside... I am a "What can I get away with" grower.)

Be very careful in your use of cork.

Some 30 years ago or more, ground cork was touted as the new, great potting medium. It was cheap, uniform in size, and easy to work with. The compressibility made it stabilize plants quickly, and it seemed to hold water fairly uniformly.

Unfortunately, some months after repotting plants with it, it went from “fantastic” to “root-smothering mush” seemingly overnight.

Apparently the large volume of exposed cracks/voids/cell interfaces (or whatever) allowed microbes to go to town.

Thanks for the note of caution regarding cork. (OP I hope this is not too far off the original topic of packing peanuts!) My approach is to use the highest grade cork I can find. Cork, being the bark of the cork oak tree, is a highly variable material. There are different grading systems (which I don't pretend to understand), but generally the higher grades have more uniform material distribution with lower porosity and fewer pits and fissures, and are also largely absent insect and fungal damage. Generally speaking "flor grade" cork is the highest quality, and to many does not even look like cork because it is so bright and uniform. Part of the grade of cork has to do with the age of the tree (and the thickness of the bark) that the cork was harvested from. I will then disinfect and coat in activated charcoal dust. I only use gigantic pieces to keep airflow high and usually in a orchid pot with holes. Only have two pots like this but it's worked so far.

I grow in Massachusetts. Indoor in the winters, hybrid indoor/outdoor in summer.

The powdered graphite idea came from this article: Frontiers | Getting a Grip on the Adhesion Mechanism of Epiphytic Orchids – Evidence From Histology and Cryo-Scanning Electron Microscopy

If you scroll down you'll see Fig. 6 is interesting.
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Ar...64357-g006.jpg

-Florian

I just got a box full of orchids fully packed in peanuts from Andy's today.

Black friday sale on right now too...

:biggrin:

Not that anyone is going to be eating orchids any time soon, but polystyrene (styrofoam) leaches into water, even in low levels, and causes health and environmental hazards. That's why California is aiming to ban it in the next couple years. For a similar function, I think I'd rather use the giant sized LECA in the middle of my pots.

Aside: My Brassavolas die a slow death whenever I try to pot them. The only way I've been able to keep them alive is mounted, on cork barks with a big of sphag.

Can you point me to where there is any suggestion of powdered graphite?

I scanned that article while drinking my first cup of coffee, so must have missed it.

The article does not mention powdered graphite.

I'm making a somewhat - but not entirely - blind leap that powdered graphite can fill in or smooth over the "crevices in bark substrate" in this illustration:

https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Ar...64357-g006.jpg

Which, I imagine, would prevent the velamin root hairs and "glue like substance" from adhering onto the walls of and into the crevices of an unglazed clay pot - turning the interior of a clay pot into a non-stick surface. This can be done with a pencil, basically.

Pointless? Maybe. And I'll have to report back on whether this actually works. Then again, I really dislike the look of plastic.

I've noticed these too when I bought a few medium orchids from SVO. It's also convenient when you buy appliances from amazon

I'm the same way.

A focus on “potting aesthetics” is an obvious indication of having an insufficient number of plants!

I screenshot this and sent to husband. He’s not happy.

Sorry (not sorry)

He's married to an orchid nut, so needs to get over it NOW.

I have many peanuts from last Andy's parcel. I'm thinking of using them as filling material to transfer my vanda into mixed with around 30% sphagmoss. I assume these peanut will be way alot more airier than any other medium, making the Vanda believe that it is not being buried and weighted down. Anything to help me do less of a chore with these orchid.

Peanuts and styro pieces work great for vandas. I put in plenty but nothing else.

I personally love the inert white packing peanuts for the areas of the pot that don't have live roots. Hopefully that means fewer "empty areas" at time of next repotting. That being said, if I bought a plant with a ton of peanuts used in this fashion I might be less than thrilled - I expect better roots from my vendors!