Mounting = dry orchids
 

So I mounted 2 of my phals a few months ago on cork barks. They were in moss before and was doing fine with the care I was giving them. I thought mounting them would be better...but after 3 months, I was forced to rethink.

No matter how much I water them, they were drying out. The leaves and roots were growing but look like they are losing moisture. I added some moss to the bark, no help at all! My other orchids (which are in bark and moss), are doing better. Mounting was just slowly dehydrating these 2. The leaves don't have any moisture in them, they have come dry and thin! The plants also lost a few leaves each. The roots are starting to get brown and woody, instead of plump and green, the way they were before. So I took them off the mounts and repotted them in their old plastic pots (good thing I don't throw things away) with some moss..they seem to need a lot of moisture. I hope I'll be able to bring these plants back. :(

I have a memory of someone here saying before that Toronto has really low humidity, is that right?

You say "however much I water them" but how much is that. Even in my fairly humid environment I water mounts every day, and I really soak them at each watering. In the summer I water twice a day and again we don't exactly have dry summers here.

It just might be too dry in your environment. Sorry it didn't work out :(

Everyone has they're own unique mini-environment. The trick is to discover what culture techniques work best in your particular environment. For me, it's been fun to try lots of different ways of growing and eventually stumble onto a method that works well in my growing area. Just as an example, I grow my orchids on the south side of my house in Ft. Lauderdale and I have very good results with the culture I now use. My neighbor, two doors down, grows orchids on the northwest side of the house and she's struggled to get any blooms at all. Her orchids never look healthy and they're about 200' away from where I grow mine. Ideas from growers on this forum are great as a starting point and from there you can slowly discover what works best for you. By the way, I'm not a big fan of mounting phalaenopsis unless you're growing your orchids in a green house or in the tropics.

Phals do seem to need more moisture at the roots than many orchids do. Moss can work well in a dry environment as long as it doesn't pack down and stay soggy. My favourite mix for all my orchids is coconut chips with large perlie and charcoal if I have it. It stays nice and loose. The clear plastic pots allow you to see the roots and tell if they are silver [need water] or green.

I water all mounts with a garden hose 1-3 times per days. Proper soak. It depends a bit on the outside temps and humidity of course, but at lease once early in the day and normally also once around lunch time. The third round in the afternoon I can skip for some, others (read aerangis and bare-root hanging vandas) really need that third round as well. If I did not have a greenhouse where I could splash and mess with water, I'm not sure I'd attempt any mounts at all. But that's just me, perhaps.

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Agree! Also loooooove coconut chips and perlite in combo. Have not added charcoal yet. Like you say, it holds perfect amount of moisture and remains airy and loose for long. Struggle to get hold of coconut chips here though, so I'm rationing it out. ;)

I just got my first mounted plants a week ago. One of them I have already moved to a pot because it was impossible to keep it moist and it likes to have wet feet. I was planning to mount my dendrobium cuthbertsonii too, but that's not gonna happen unless I set up that terrarium I keep talking about. It's drying out pretty quickly in the little pot that its in.

Indoor growing where I live, means low humidity. When humidity is low like that having mounted plants may not be the wisest idea, unless those plants really like it dry. I'm spraying my bulbo and dracula two or three times daily right now, and that's with a humidifier running in the room they're growing in. The dracula is very happy to be a mounted plant, it's growing new roots all over the place and I intend to leave it that way, but if it gets any thirstier than it is now, that terrarium is going to have to become a reality. I think that mounted culture makes a lot of sense. It's just not for every plant, in every growing situation.

I discovered that our Home Hardware sells bales of coconut chips as a mulch for gardens. I bought a bale and washed it several times before use. It ended up being a pretty cheap orchid medium and I am finding that combined with the perlite, it's perfect! I tried coconut fiber, which they also sell as a soil additive, but it packs down and breaks down too fast.

I have some mounts and baskets that need some extra humidity when inside. So I put them in clear plastic containers (typically re-purposed food bottles/tubs). I hang the mount from the edge of the container but inside it and let a small amount of water accumulate in the bottom to boost the humidity. I'm also trying this with some basket growers. So far so good. The guys still dry out daily, but not in minutes so that plants are staying hydrated.

I have eight mounts currently but I removed most of my orchids from their mounts and potted them in lava rock. Some that need to dry 'quickly' are in plastic vanda baskets. As Tucker says, it all depends on your climate. It also depends on the orchid. Some orchids just do best mounted (the ones, when mounted bare root, don't seem to mind being forgotten a few days).

You repotted them. You have done right. This is learning by doing, success and error.
A Chinese proverb says, if you notice you have done a mistake and do not rectify, you make the next mistake.

Mounted orchids are higher maintenance than potted, as far as watering goes.
Even my "drier" growing ones take water daily (soaked in summer) except maybe in winter (cool, damp weather here, and I try to keep furnace off during the day).

My moisture loving aerangis has a fair amount if sphag on the mount to keep it happy during the hot, dry summer days here, and actually needs to be watered a bit less than my other mounted orchids.

Mounts do take more care. I mist/water daily.

I have over 30 mounts and I water 3x a week and mist at least twice a day its hard to keep the humidity at 45% in the house, if I'm luck it gets up to 50% some days

I watered them everyday really well, multiple times. Soaking the corks etc. But after a few hours, they would dry out. I think Toronto is a low humid place and specially my home. It's also well insulated so I hardly have to turn on the heat. It's airy and very bright though. The orchids in the pots are doing good. It was just these 2 (they were great before as well)

And guess what? I repotted them after taking them off the mounts right? A couple of hrs later I noticed the roots on both plants have REALLY plumped up!! All nice and bright green! I think mounting, in my environment, is not possible. They'll be more happy in pots. Immediately started showing signs of improvement so I'm kinda glad I repotted them!

There's a reason that they use cork for wine bottles. It's the same reason that you shouldn't use cork as a mount in less humid environments.

I live it humid miami and I water EVERYTHING daily in the summer and my mounts daily in the winter.

Even in Miami, I rarely had success with cork. I switched to cedar planks and the orchids love it.

Toronto has high humidity. I grew up there. During the winter when it is bitterly cold the humidity drops dramatically. That is when you need a humidifier. The dryness isn't necessary from your heating system.

Interesting, because when I heard it was low humidity it WAS a conversation about winter, so that explains what I heard, I hadn't realised it was just in the winter. Good to know.

Toronto is VERY temperate. The temperature range there is from 20 degrees F to 75 degrees F. That means the humidity stays pretty consistently above 55% outdoors, year round. The humidity does not drop in the winter in Toronto, it goes up. Average humidity in December in Toronto is 70%. I know it seems like it would be the other way around, but it's not.

The lack of humidity indoors in the winter, is caused by forced air heating of any kind. It saps the moisture right out of the air as its heated before pushing that hot dry air back into your house. This is why most people with breathing problems run humidifiers in their bedrooms in the winter.

The climate I live in is classified as "subarctic." Bitterly cold here, is when you step outside to grab the newspaper and your nose sticks together when you inhale. That might explain why we only have one local newspaper left and even they only deliver once a week in the winter. LOL!

Toronto is not in a subarctic zone. It's in what is called a continental humid zone, which has much less violent temperature swings, but Toronto DOES suffer from lake effect snow due to being so close to the Great Lakes, which is completely NOT fun because it's so sudden.

All great for me to hear and just in time to save my mounted orchids from suffering this winter. I'm going to bump up the watering frequency on the ones I have left. Maybe sell a couple more. I've been reducing the # of mounts I'm growing (indoors under lights) I had accumulated too many, and carrying them all to the next room to water once or twice a day became a chore.

Toronto experiences like 5 weather changes a day. But my home has low humidity. It's just the way it was built. My apartment is a walkout and it's very very well insulated. I dont even turn on the heater during winter. I also have a terrarium so have to keep it kinda on the warm side during this time of the yr and that means less open windows. That is contributing to the already low humidity. It's very bright and airy place, no problems in the summer. All my orchids are doing fine..so is my Maid of Orleans Jasmine, Peacock plant, Dieffenbachia, Rhoeo and Croton. But they're potted, so have more moisture. It was those 2 who were drying out because of the cork, I suppose.

Since I reported them, they're doing great!! Roots are no longer dry, the large one's leaves have actually absorbed the moisture from the moss and the daily mistings and I do notice they have gotten a bit thicker than they were. I mist all my plants multiple times daily and they also have humidity trays. I'm just glad I repotted them before it was too late!

It should still be possible to mount them.

We have high humidity indoors where I grow the phals, but a high temperature too which dries up wet things fast (86F to 90F). Airconditioner is only used when needed, by us humans, not the plants :), and its high temp most of the time as we are not always in the room with the plants.

Mounting phals the usual way of just covering the center with sphagnum moss and most of the roots exposed doesn't work too well in my environment, many exposed roots in a new mount dry up in a few days unless I mist them every hour I guess.

So I now cover the entire root system under a good amount of sphagnum moss when mounting. This works perfectly, and I only need to water every 2 or 3 days, depending on the temperature, when it is crispy dry. In time, air roots peek out of the moss and develop, while those inside get more established.

Here is one I recently mounted, it has a good root system, which I spread at the top, bottom, and sides ... a varigated amabilis phal

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5586/...c1251dbf_o.jpg

That looks like a great way to grow them. I once had an orchid tree with several orchids mounted with lots of sphag. It looked great when in bloom.

Here's a video where Brad puts in "copious amounts of moss" (I prefer more :)), in his words ... rescuing a bone-dry orchid in a mount

"Orchid Care" | Playing around with mounting a large Orchid, My tips and tricks to mount Orchids - YouTube

Mounted orchids are just pain in the rear as others mentioned if you are a home grower unless you have a way to hang them somewhere like basement or a greenhouse so you can maintain high humidity and mist throughtout the day with the automatic sprinkler system.

You said your phal grew well in the moss.
Going from highly moisture retentive mix like moss to something drier like bark is always a bit of challenge unless you water a lot more.
You went from moss to the other complete extreme, mount. lol

Whether it is pot or mount, it's about water. Mounted orchids might appeal to many for more natural look, but they are much harder to keep healthy in a typical home growing environment, as I'm sure you found out the hard way.

I did the same. I acutally killed one or two mounted orchids. They just dried up to death while I was on vacation. lol

I bought some more mounted orchids after that, but only because the plants I wanted were offered as mounts. So I bought them but they are all in the process of coming off the mount.

I'm glad you moved your plant back to pot and it is happy there now! :)

Another option ... in addition to fern bark slabs, I also use "pots" for my phals. But pots with holes on all sides (I guess the correct term is "basket"), both wood and plastic, whatever I have on hand, small for seedlings and bigger for older ones with bigger leaves and more root mass. 100% sphagnum moss as medium. I then hang them up vertically. Roots get their required moisture and air.

I just have to hang them up, space is a premium at my place.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3892/...cf1bf594_b.jpg

Potting Media of Phalaenopsis Species

My strategy for mounted orchids in a "home environment" is to have two places where they can be, either in a grow area or display area. Display area only when they are in bloom or when people want to see what an orchid kinda looks like in the wild.

Grow option is to lay the orchids-on-sticks flat in close proximity in a tray with clay (LECA) pebbles. I find this increases their local humidity w/out me having to have the RH so high the paint is peeling off the walls. Also, by laying flat, the water takes longer to drain out and the clay pellets slowly release moisture.

Smaller phals mounted on cork bark stay in larger plastic buckets with LECA and Moss at the bottom, again creating a very local high humidity environment for them. I simply could not water them enough in a normal house environment, so that's my fix - create two environments with no greenhouse or misting equipment at all.

mtorchid thanks for that idea !!!! My problem is solved