medium too wet (belgian climate)

[OrchidNut555]

Hi guys,

After a year or 2 I'm back into orchids. i've potted my orchids up in a moss and bark mix...i do a layer of moss, a layer of bark, repeat. I also did this to my big bulbophyllum pots...but i notice it stays very moist for 1 week and then relatively moist for another week. I want to change my mix to about 60-70% bark and the rest moss and actually mixing it together. i do worry that with the ventilation holes it may dry out too soon...is therr anyone who has some tips for my climate? the room is about 18-19 degrees c as i still live with my parents and they don't want the heating higher than this.

[camille1585]

What sort of orchids are we talking about, other than Bulbos? For more moisture loving plants maintaining a mix of sphag and bark can be beneficial, but for other types you could use less or none at all. In any case I would advise to mix the 2 throughout the pot instead of layering. The problem with layering is that it creates zones in your pot which are drying out at different speeds.

Being only slightly north of you, my climate is probably very similar. I used to mix bark and sphag but stopped completely about 2 years ago. (As a note, I grow mostly Phals and my pots don't have holes). When I moved from France I still used a 50-50 mix of bark and sphag. Like you, I found that it stayed wet too long in this climate. I then switched to about 70-80% bark and the rest sphag, and did this for several years. I was watering about once a week in the summer and every 10 days in winter. After reading about how more frequent wet dry cycles could be beneficial for growth, I switched to pure bark for some Phals (and now for all) and now water about twice as often.

It basically boils down to you having to experiment a bit as well. Reducing the amount of sphag can't hurt, and in the worst case you will need to water more often.

[OrchidNut555]

thank you so much for this reply! this helped a ton and it offers some relief too, if that makes sense.

I do have ventilation holes so i'll see how often it dries out when changing the medium.

The other orchids i own besides bulbos are phals, paphs, masdevallia and cattleyes. the cattleyas are the only ones in bark now.

I'm going to switchn up th emedia right now and mix it

[estación seca]

Look up the temperature range for each Bulbo. Not all of them are warm to hot growing. Some prefer intermediate and some even cool temperatures.

[OrchidNut555]

mine's more of a warm grower from what i've heard, it's the elizabeth ann buckleberry. so far so good, but the media defintely stayed too wet. it's now in a more bark focused mix, so fingers crossed!

[estación seca]

Are you having problems with it? Most Bulbos like a lot of water. I agree the other plants would be better with more air at the roots.

[OrchidNut555]

not yet no, then again it was only in this mix for a week. two weeks of being moist feels a little too much for me, i've drowned orchids that love lots of moisture before this way, so i'd like it to dry out once a week, if possible

[Bayard]

Bulbophyllum Elizabeth Ann ‘Buckleberry’ is easy to grow. I have mine in a basket with a bark/perlite mix. It has grown over the sides and underneath the basket. It gets lots of water all year long. I look forward to the flowers every autumn. Good luck!