What's This Mounting Media?
 

At a plant sale today I saw a grower who had his orchids mounted on plaques of a media I've never seen before. It looked like little compressed twigs that all ran vertically. It was really porous and the plants he had on it were spectacular. Does this sound familiar to any of you? And have you had any luck using it? I'm mounting more and more of my orchids and I'm curious!

Thank you! :bowing

It is probably a tree fern mount. I use this for some of my oncidiums. Most orchids that have fine roots will have the roots venture through the spaces between the twigs and this type of mount provides more consistent moisture to the roots. Some people really like tree fern, but some also don't. You should probably try it out and see how it does for you.

You also have to keep in mind that the tree fern - one of several dicksonia species - are being over-harvested in the wild.

Another alternative is EcoWeb Advanced Growing Substrate (made from recycled PETE soda and water bottles.)

In Europe another alternative to tree fern is Epiweb. It's pretty much the same stuff as EcoWeb I believe. I've got some on order to try. It looked really good when I saw some being used in a terrarium demonstration at a show in March.

I really like the idea of both EpiWeb and EcoWeb because they are made out of recycled materials and don't mean you are using an over-harvested wild reasource.

Epiweb isn't the alternative, it's the original! ;) Ecoweb is a 'copy' of it.

If I ever were to want to mount something on treefern, I would use epiweb instead. Doesn't degrade, and I've thoroughly against the use of treefern due to overharvesting, like Ray brought up. I don't even trust 'sustainably' harvested treefern, not since I found out that all the 'sustainable' tropical wood coming out of Peru (I think) is actually illegally felled, with the govt's consent.

While we're on this topic Camille, as you may have gathered from above I've placed an order here in the UK for the EpiWeb so I don't need your kind offer of getting some for me this time.

I had some problems getting hold of the UK vendor because he was at shows, but finally managed to place an order when it came back into stock on his website last week :)

Actually Camille. that is not correct.

I used to be the North American distributor for Epiweb, and the Swedish originator had it shipped to me from a manufacturing facility in the US.

Due to communications and supply issues, we parted ways and I started selling the same material as EcoWeb.

Yes, EcoWeb is not the "original" product, but it is the same, not a copy.

That's why I put copy between ' ', because I couldn't find the right word. I guess it would be better to call it an equivalent.

Just wanting to clarify, Camille. Sometimes folks equate "copy" with "inferior".

So basically EcoWeb is just a "rebranding" of exactly the same product. That's good to know.

I had an email yesterday to say my order for EpiWeb from the UK supplier has been shipped :biggrin: they had said there was a delay on their website due to a backlog after a show but it wasn't as bad as they had indicated.