Repeated misting in a greenhouse environment - Orchid Board

Brian1212 · #6 04-07-2020, 07:35 PM

Aerial roots can absorb moisture from the air if the air has enough of it. Misting that often would certainly ensure that but the roots would never be saturated with too much moisture either like you can get with watering in pots.

As to the Ebb and flow. You are too focused on the wording but basically all ebb and flow is is watering from below once a day for 10 minutes or so.. Forget it being hydroponics or not, that is what happens. All hydroponics is is growing without the use of soil. Lava rock, clay pebbles, perlite, coco coir and bark are soil-less. As such I would argue that most orchids are grown in hydroponic media by default and there is no difference growing orchids in clay pebbles watered by hand to plants grown in hydroponic setups watered by timers.

You can easily replicate Ebb and flow by dunking your plants manually into a bucket of water and let them soak for 10 minutes every day.

Whether you call it watering your plants or Ebb and flow, the plants are getting watered the same way, one by timer and pump, the other by lifting and dunking by hand.

So yes Ebb and flow is nothing new or special, pretty much every orchid grower does it to some extent without realizing they are doing ebb and flow by hand.

Semi-hydroponics on the other hand is an invented term, which is just placing the plant into some clay pebbles into a layer of water at the bottom permanently. Whether you call it placing the plant in a bowl of water or semi-hydroponics is the same - most people prefer the fancier sounding semi-hydroponics.