moving to hydroton
 

I have moved a few plants to hydroton as an experiment, but for now I will not be trying s/h. I plan to continue to water and fertilize in a traditional way. Have others had success with this method? If so do you have any pointers?

For the record I have moved a phal, catt, and oncidium from a bark mix to medium hydroton.

That's what I do with what I grow in LECA. Everything seems to love it and I water and fertilize like you in the "traditional" way.

I haven't tried it yet, but a frend of mine grows all his Masdevallias in his greenhouse like that. He waters them once or twice a day and fertilizes as needed.

Cheers.
Jim

Have grown many orchids in s/h and my catts, phals and phrag have loved it. Check out all the information that is at First Rays Orchids. There Ray talks about all that is needed to grow sucessfull in s/h.

I am in the process of moving everything, except mounted to s/h.

I've just started growing some this way. Time will tell if I get on with it, but I know some people here have said they grow ALL their orchids happily that way.

I'm trying some in S/H and some in just Lecca as a standard medium like you are doing, so far so good but it's early days for both.

I have about 70 orchids that grow outside in south Florida. They are all in Hydroton or a mix of Hydroton and charcoal and a few in Dyna-rok II. All of my Cattleyas and Phals are doing extremely well but my Oncidiums took a little longer to adjust to it. I am not yet convinced that it's good for orchids with fine roots like Oncidiums. I water every other day in the summer and I fertilize once a week. The Catts are in clay pots and the Phals are in plastic pots. The plants are growing faster and have fewer problems than when I used fir bark. I highly recommend Hydroton. Good luck!

I've found that my catt alliances love hydroton, but the phals I have tried did not thrive as they did not stay as moist as they would have liked- the leca did not hold water long enough.

I agree. I have my Phals in hydroton in plastic pots with a saucer. I water until the saucer is full and then water again when the saucer is almost dry. This is basically just like s/h because the water wicks up from the saucer through the hydroton.

I have always took my cats out of bark as soon as possible and put them in hydrotron and water as usual ....but lol for me that is a lot and they do wonderfull like this and if I want to later the move on to full s/h is easy as can be....I tried some of the small grade leca from the pet store this summer since I was out of the larger size and it worked great too and it stays a little wetter than the larger grade for me.

Well mine that I moved to this method about a month ago are all doing well :biggrin:

I also moved some to S/H a few weeks before that and they are also doing well.