Anyone do any "twin studies"?

[Grim Tuesday]

I was repotting a N.B.S "Dendrobium Chocolate Chip" yesterday when I realized it is actually two plants! They had clearly been growing together since compot, and each had the same number of growths, leaves and about equal root systems. I decided to put one of them in S/H and the other in bark to see which they actually prefer under my conditions. I'll try to keep them right next to each other at all times; the bark one will get watered every week like the S/H one. I'm very curious to see if one of them will thrive more than the other. Of course, I will have to wait years for the result of this experiment. And the results will have to be interpreted in the context of this plant in my conditions. Hopefully I'll remember this thread when a conclusion is clear...

But it got me thinking though, I'm sure others have tried this experiment before, right? What plants did you try it with, what were your conditions and what were your results?

[estación seca]

You won't need to wait too many years with Chocolate Chip.

The more often you do a complete flush and watering with S/H, the faster the plant grows. I wish I had time to water my S/H plants every day.

Results between bark vs S/H vary a lot with growing conditions. S/H is definitely better for me, warm almost all year, but people with cooler winter growing areas find it can be a problem for warmth loving plants. Conversely S/H can make it easier to grow cool loving plants because of the evaporative cooling at the roots.

[Ray]

ES gave a good response, but don’t forget that your plant, having lived in bark, will now need to grow an entirely new root system that is optimized for the S/H conditions.

[Grim Tuesday]

Originally Posted by Ray

ES gave a good response, but don’t forget that your plant, having lived in bark, will now need to grow an entirely new root system that is optimized for the S/H conditions.

Luckily for the integrity of this study, the plant arrived to me in sphagnum. I'm not sure if that is more similar to S/H conditions or bark, but it will at least be "different" for both root systems.

[tmoney]

yes, we have a couple of these going now, though admittedly our terrarium (which i the variable for one particular comparison) is a total piece of crap and not set up well so its not a valid study.

a new one for this year is 2 fdk after darks which came to us nearly identical but from different nurseries. this year we put one in s/h and kept the other in our normal media. we water our s/h plant the same as our others (even down to soaking the whole media for 15 minutes a week, same bottle of watering fert solution, and they live right next to each other). well, that will be controlled, but we only repotted them and havent started watering them yet!

our seedlings have many comparisons with 2 groups of compots placed in 2 different locations in the room, but all other conditions the same (including number of plants per pot, size of pot, spacing, etc.). not seeing much difference in any of our trials, but only 6 months going at most.

[camille1585]

If I understood correctly, your intention it to water them at the same frequency. I would not do that, it is better to water them at the frequency needed per substrate type. Trying to keep them on the same schedule is going to skew your results as at least one plant will have been grown suboptimally.

[Ray]

Originally Posted by camille1585

If I understood correctly, your intention it to water them at the same frequency. I would not do that, it is better to water them at the frequency needed per substrate type. Trying to keep them on the same schedule is going to skew your results as at least one plant will have been grown suboptimally.

I think it is a worthy goal to be able to water everything at the same frequency, if for no other reasons than simplicity and convenience, but to do so, you will have to adjust the medium+pot combination for each individual plant so that it matches the schedule while giving the plans what they need. It took me about 35-40 years of growing to "tune" my collection that way, and then when I downsized my collection from a greenhouse to windowsills/deck-growing a few years ago, I had to start the process all over again.

[tmoney]

i cant say that what we do would be applicable to others, but in our apartment growing conditions, watering traditional media and the s/h plants the same way has been seeming to work. granted, we do flush the s/h plants a couple days after fertilizing, so our schedule isn't perfectly the same. but the flush is the only deviation.

now that the temps are going up, we will start to give some 2x waterings a week, so not all of them get the same exact water all the time. but in general, saturdays are watering days....