Seeking help with first Neo & Kokedama

[Ray]

Besgrow has several grades, and I have "wrapped" with some I have had.

[Shoreguy]

Shredded dollar bills are available from those taken out of service do to age and damage and are used for novelty packing by some companies.

Bills are not made of paper but cloth and should be more durable than sphagnum. They however will not provide any nutrition so would be in the category of any inorganic substrate. Leca is inorganic and may work as a replacement for tree fern or for drainage at bottom of pot.

I recommend a bark/shredded tree fern mixture and that is not a joke. It should get more attention by Neofinetia growers.

[WaterWitchin]

Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts

i have an unopened bundle from besgrow......if you want it ill send it to you

---------- Post added at 09:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:06 AM ----------

they claim that over 80% of the strands are 100mm

i have not opened the cube so i dunno

Thanks Buddy, but I've got that size. For the wrapping part it's AAAAA (5A), which is about a foot long strands. It's usually hand-harvested, which is why it's also pricey.

[Hakumin]

In all honesty, the reason people think that good quality NZ sphag is so expensive is because the vendors in the US and Europe are guilty of artificially inflating prices. They see that other western vendors are charging exorbitantly high prices, so they jump on the bandwagon and match those prices to maximize their profits. (It's also traceable back to pretty much one single US vendor who started all of this...)

On the side of the growers, way too many growers simply pay the prices without question and just assume that it has to be that expensive. Because of this, and the fact that there aren't very many competing vendors outside of Japan and Korea who import this type of moss, the cost of the moss is being held artificially high.

While admittedly there is indeed a shortage of moss right now due to the current import/export slowdowns around the world, NZ sphagnum isn't normally that much more expensive compared to bark or other typical orchid media when you know where to get the best prices.

I often purchase my moss from Korea or Japan and prices are about:

• 2A bales, $38 per kilo
• 3A bales, $48 per kilo
• 5A bales, $68 per kilo
• Loose packed hand selected 40cm strands, $18 per 100g bag

Bales are typically 3kg and one of them can remoss hundreds of plants.

In addition to that, there are ways to purchase moss directly from the harvester in New Zealand, and prices are even lower if you do that.

Heck, you can even get small bales of 3A and 4A from Amazon Japan, and they'll ship it worldwide.

Regarding the loose packed strands, western growers often call this 5A, but this is not 5A. These lose packed hand selected strand packages are graded by the moss harvesters as premium grade long strand, and are 1 or 2 tiers above 5A depending on the length. This sort of moss is not at all necessary unless you really want to make absolutely perfect mounds for judging. Normal 4A and 5A bales are more than suitable enough for daily growing. Personally I most often use 3A moss for the inside of the mound and only use 3-5 strands of 5A to keep the mound together on the outside. If I'm out of 5A, I'll occasionally use a few strands of cotton basting thread to keep the mound together.

[Shadeflower]

so this post might not help you at all WW and I don't really use moss, what I do use is polyester-cotton wicking cord.

Wrapped around roots it acts like moss. Ok maybe not quite the same but it works. I know I mentioned once I tried toilet paper, that starts molding quite fast and is really not good, it clumps up too so I dunno if the dollar bills were meant to be used as substrate but some things just don't work well.

A cotton wicking cord is really quite universal and I want to encourage people to use wicking cord more. If anyone wants to know what I would attribute as being my biggest breakthrough I would say it is wicking cord hands down. I would be half the grower without it (although I'd probably be using moss instead ).

there are different grades of wicking cord (nothing is manufactured exactly the same) so I will just link which brand has worked for me:

Amazon.com

You might think - I have never heard of anyone using this wicking cord to grow neofinetia's so it cannot possibly work. Up to you if you want to risk it.

I think it is no bigger risk than using moss. What I like about it is that you can have the wick sitting in some water so it will be wicking water up like it is meant to do and keeps the wick wrapped around the roots hydrated.

The wick should be very loosely places around the roots, no need to make such a big moss mound with it.

I do wonder if I should post this at all. I know I will attract criticism from some for daring to suggest to grow a neo in such a way so er lets put this down as an experimental method in case one cannot source long strand spagnum.

Maybe try spagnum with wicking cord to hold it all in place?

[DirtyCoconuts]

shade- do you flush the wick? are you at all concerned about salt build up and such? that was always why i avoided them but i love them for potted plants (like house plants )

[Shadeflower]

hey DC, very good question, it does get very algaey like moss does too... So it does benefit from an occasional cleaning, I just scrape the algae off but yes wick is what has made me succeed with my Ferns when I never could keep them indoors before and it works great for orchids too.

I was initially worried that roots in contact with wick rots but that really does not happen readily at all. (they need to stay airy)

But it all depends like once I placed a glass filled with water higher than the orchid but this is dangerous as gravity will transfer all the water down so it created a slow constant drip that did cause too much wetness.

If you have experience using it with your house plants you shouldn't have any issues at all I'd say.

---------- Post added at 10:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:59 PM ----------

Hey DC, this is just a random picture but it shows how ferns, mosses and orchid roots all like growing in it and what state it ends up looking after a year.
If you looks really closely you will see there is an orchid root growing straight through the wicking cord.

[DirtyCoconuts]

hey ww- here is the group shot i promised for scale and reference


Untitled by J Solo, on Flickr

[AnonYMouse]

How's it going?

If you need to tidy up your mound, you can use acrylic loopy scrubby yarn and wind it around the mound. I've used net bags (onions, garlic packaging) and hair nets, too.

[DirtyCoconuts]

“If you need to tidy up your mound……”



1 the dirty in my name ain’t by accident
2 I am a child