First time mounting orchids. Help!
 

Hey everyone!

I'm new to this forum, but I've been an orchid collector for a while! I'm hoping you can give me some advice for these vandaceous types I've been struggling with.

They've been unhappy in every type of medium I've tried, so I'm making a last-ditch effort to appease them by mounting them. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on mounting, because I might be giving these to someone with a greenhouse if they don't perk up.

I found some cork circles at a local store for cheap. I loosely wrapped plant wire around the plant and the cork to temporarily affix it. If the plants are happy on their mounts, I'll drill some holes to make it more permanent.

I've placed the cork circles in trays with pebbles and water for humidity.

Attachment 71643

The whole setup looks a bit weird to me, but this is my first time mounting, so I suppose anything would look weird! LOL

Questions:
1. Does this look like a mount that could work?
2. How do I fertilize plants on a mount? Do I just put the fertilizer in with the water I spray the roots with? If so, how do I keep the fertilizer from going all over the plant and burning the leaves when I spray it?

Thanks for the advice, fellow orchid lovers!
Smiles, Jenn

One of my first orchids was a vanda someone bought for me at a gift shop in Hawaii. It remain rootless in bark for close to four years before it was moved to lava rock. Plastic Vanda baskets ($2-$3) are the latest addition (clay pots were too heavy for my shelves).
The mounts look very nice. Vandas are very tenacious orchids so I think you will have no further trouble now that they are mounted. You can probably eventually set the cork in a vanda basket or attach to a larger mount. I water mine until the roots are green. Good luck!

Fertilizer. The advice for orchids is weakly, weekly. If you plan to fertilize every day, use a weak solution. The leaves should not be harmed. Flush on occaision to remove salts and mineral build-up.

I think your mounts look ok. I have one vanda in a teak basket without media. I water it every morning with tap water untill roots turn green. Once a week I fill a kitchen sink with diluted fertilizer (usual strength for a weekly-weekly regime) and soak the whole thing for half an hour or so, sometimes longer. I haven't seen any fertilizer burns. My indoor humidity is around 50% on good days so usually the roots turn back to silver color about an hour after watering.
I hope that helps a little.

I don't grow vandas so can't help with the culture.

My :twocents: on the cork used. They look like the processed stuff I've seen at craft stores. If so, it is made with ground up cork and some sort of binder. I don’t know what the binders effects on the orchids would be and how it would hold up to the amount of moisture exposure.

Virgin cork pieces are relatively inexpensive but purchased online, shipping can be cost prohibitive. You can find very nice cork pieces (and other mount potentials) in the reptile aisle of pet supply stores for $10-15. You can easily cut them to size.

Hi Jenn! If I didn't already say it, welcome! And good luck with the Vandas. :)

vandas can take lots of sun and therefore can use lots of water and fresh air. Mine isnt exactly mounted but it not exactly potted in media either. I have a few wine corks in a 2" plastic pot holdin the plant stable. Then I put the plastic pot into a teak basket to let the roots go nuts. I water it 3 to 4 times a day. Gets 50% shaded sun all day most of the day. It gets fertilized with the watering. You got to water the mounted ones religiously everyday multiple times a day if your outside in the heat. I dont know how people get them to grow inside so I cant go there. My lone vanda is a V. Sanderiana Alba and is doing fine :).

I can say though from my own experience if you dont live in a warm humid climate to start with. vandas mounted like that are tough to grow without a greenhouse for humidity. watering just doesnt take the place of the moisture that gets infused by humidity into a plant. from the look of some of the roots its been overwatered, bec humidity is too low and the plants staying too dry.

Good luck with that set up.

http://oi45.tinypic.com/30vydtv.jpg

Welcome aboard !

I suggest vase culture, since they are seedlings(they look like less than a year old).
Once they are well established or if you grew them for a year and a half in your care then mount it or put it in a basket....
my vase culture Vandas get soaked in water for 15 min every other day and remove the water and once a week soaked in fertilizer....the vase maintains high humidity.
you are in an area where its nice warm and humid in summers but dry and frigid in the winters....
bright south facing window is a nice place for it...but since its still warm outside it can be under a shady tree

Thanks! I was actually contemplating attempting vase culture, because it would fix the humidity problem, especially in the wintertime. I'm in Pennsylvania, so the hot, humid summers and cool dry winters are exactly what I've got going on.

The plants are actually not seedlings...they're "mid-sized" according to the company that sent them. I think they might look smaller because they're mounted on those huge cork rounds. But anyway, I do have a vanda seedling and it's waaaay smaller than these. According to the website, these are within a year and a half to two years of blooming.

I guess my main concern is that they've been moved around so much that I don't want to traumatize them any more. I had them in LECA pellets in pots to begin with, but that held too much moisture, so then I made baskets which I mounted in the tops of special pots that had holes all through them for ventilation. I put coarse bark and LECAs in the baskets. The vandas didn't like that either and were drying out too quickly in the hot western window I'd been putting them in. I added a humidifier and a fan and watered more frequently, but they were still unhappy. Now I'm trying the mount.

Do you think it would be traumatizing to move them to a vase now, or will that actually help them because they'd be in ideal conditions? I do think there's a good possibility that the vase method might work for me.

Thanks so much for your help! I'm grateful for all the advice, and I'm DETERMINED not to kill these! :biggrin:

I had all my vandas in vases for a while, and in my indoor conditions I found that it was better to soak them at least twice a day. You would have to try and see if once every second day would be enough in your environment.
When number of my vandas grew over ten, twice a day watering became a chore, so I moved them to clay pots with small amount of chc, so the roots are still somewhat exposed, and they seem quite happy producing tons of roots and leaves.
I water chc every 2-3 days.

Transitioning to vase wouldn't be a problem as long as you will water them often and regularly. There is a thred pinned to the top somewhere in the Vandas forum. There is a lot of info on the vase culture. See if it works for you.
Good luck with your vandas! Hope to see the blooms pictures soon.