Luwasa Hhydroculture Pots

[Keiki78]

Hello everyone, I started transferring some of my orchids to Luwasa pots. The instructions state to let the media dry out before re-watering, but most of what I have read about s/h culture is to always keep the reservoir full. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I live in South Florida and have all of my orchids growing on a patio that gets East morning sun.

[Ray]

If you let it go dry between waterings, then you are not growing your plants in semi-hydroponics, but are merely growing in traditional culture using LECA as a medium.

One disadvantage of those pots is the work you must do to flush them - lift the plant in the culture pot out of the outer pot. Dump the contents of the outer pots. Put the culture pot somewhere and rinse the medium thoroughly with plain water, the put it all back together and refill the reservoir with fresh fertilizer solution.


Ray Barkalow
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[DelawareJim]

Ray is correct. I've been using Luwasa hydroculture pots for a number of years. If you go on the Luwasa website LUWASA HYDROCULTURE,Swiss & European Home & Garden - LUWASA System, you'll see you're not really supposed to let them go dry. I've found taking the culture pot out, rinsing, and replacing the nutrient to be a hassle. Also, over time, I tend to get lazy with them and just top up my nutrient solution which leads to faster mineral salt accumulation.

They're great for house plants and I grow all mine this way, but it doesn't really work for orchids in the long run.

Cheers.
Jim

[Nexogen]

The invention of the S/H culture is the culmination of work done by Ray.

[Keiki78]

Thank you for the responses.

The Luwasa pots are difficult to flush. This will be my third time having to take them apart to flush them. So I shouldn't be letting them dry out? I can keep the water line at optimum all the time? I liked the way they looked, but with all of my orchids this seems like a very time consuming job.

I do have some of my orchids in home made containers (Thank you Ray) with 1/4 holes an inch from the bottom that I water about every 3 days with garden hose tap water. Every other week I water them with worm tea and Essential plus 1-0-1 root starter. They seem to be doing well but I am also very concerned about algae. When the algae turns black is that when I need to clean out the media?

---------- Post added at 11:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:31 AM ----------



---------- Post added at 11:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:33 AM ----------

[DelawareJim]

Originally Posted by Keiki78

Thank you for the responses.

The Luwasa pots are difficult to flush. This will be my third time having to take them apart to flush them. So I shouldn't be letting them dry out? I can keep the water line at optimum all the time? I liked the way they looked, but with all of my orchids this seems like a very time consuming job.

I do have some of my orchids in home made containers (Thank you Ray) with 1/4 holes an inch from the bottom that I water about every 3 days with garden hose tap water. Every other week I water them with worm tea and Essential plus 1-0-1 root starter. They seem to be doing well but I am also very concerned about algae. When the algae turns black is that when I need to clean out the media?

No, you should not let them dry out. And yes, you should try to keep the water line between the brown band at the bottom of the gauge where it says "Min" and the centre line just above the "^ opt v" printing. How fast that drops depends on how fast your plants utilise the water/nutrient solution. If the plant uses a lot, it's okay to fill it to the "max" line.

The algae is not a problem. It's also not black but actually a very dark green. Being a plant, the algae is using the same water and fertiliser that the orchid is. It doesn't hurt you plants, it just looks sort of ugly. I've come to accept it as the price to pay for growing in S/H.

Cheers.
Jim