My S/H experience: 4 years later..

[orchidjunky]

Hi all..

I haven't really been on this site in a long time but I'd like to share some pics and my experience with s/h over the past 4 years.

I'll just start out by saying that back in 2007-2008 I really went orchid crazy and bought over 30-40 orchids many of which were in either bark or sphagnum moss. I learned about S/H mostly from this site and, being the risk taker that I am, transferred my entire collection to s/h with hydroton being my medium of choice.

(Yes I know this is not recommended but I was OK with the idea that my entire collection could be lost...being a scientist myself the experimentation aspect of this transfer is what drove me to do it).

To make a long story short, from my original collection only 8 had survived.. I really don't think it had anything to do with the media change..I think I attribute it to my location. For the first year I had them in s/h they were all in various windows that all received lots of afternoon light and most of my plants did quite well during this period.

Unfortunately I had to move from that location and got stuck with an apartment with only one good window. So any orchids that stayed in this window really thrived. Anything else tended to decline.

I think one good thing came from all of this which is I am now less inclined to "impulse buy" orchids like I did before!

In any case.. here are pics of 2 of my orchids that have really done well in s/h. One is a Cattleya which has bloomed for me many times with each new growth and the other is paph primulinum x paph sanderianum. This paph I grew in my window sill and for a good 3 years did nothing but finally bloomed last month!