Switching over to S/H?

[Grim Tuesday]

I tried a lot of plants in semi-hydro last year. Everything Ray says is correct. The #1 most important thing when you get advice on growing orchids is to get advice from someone who has the same type of growing conditions as you. If you're growing on the windowsill, outdoors, or in a greenhouse affect whether the advice is applicable to you or not. This is even the case within a single house.

I used to grow in a warm corner of my bathroom with supplemental lights, but I moved last year to a place that had more windowsills so I put more plants there. My experience was that this was generally negative for semihydro as the cool of the windows were not loved by the plants.

I tried a broad spectrum of plants in S/H and under my conditions the success rate by genus was:

Oncidium alliance / Miltoniopsis: ~90% -- these guys love it across the board
Dendrobium alliance - ~60% -- several of these guys like it. The ones who didn't were ones that wanted to be dryer than S/H allowed.
Cattleya alliance - ~50% -- the ones that didn't like it also wanted to be dryer, or had sensitive roots to the salts at the top.
Bulbophylum alliance ~ 30% -- these guys wanted to be warmer than S/H allowed, even on a heating pad I couldn't get them warm enough in my conditions.

I will say, the ones who like it love it. I have a laelia purpurata hybrid and an epidendrum walisi that are going crazy. I also have a echiveria (the succulent!) that dropped into a pot that is doing marvelously.

Quite honestly, if I were going to start again from scratch I would budget $150 for a big bag of NZ spaghnum, three bags of orchiata bark in different chip sizes, buy some clear square pots (clear to see when they need to be watered, square so they pack together nicely on a shelf), and use that setup instead of messing with S/H. And I would simply stick to only acquiring plants that can handle winter down to 50 degs (on the windowsill) and being watered once a week without needing to be put into an always-wet situation. Maybe some day I'll have a greenhouse that can be humid and heated, but for now I'd rather not struggle growing challenging plants but rather just enjoy easy growers that thrive in my conditions!