Going to try S/H outside

[Gwenchanter]

Well I purchased a bag of s/h and I've never used it before but I thought I'd give it a try. Anyway, I grow all of my phals outdoors and I've heard that you need to keep a resevoir under the pot. Do I still need one if its outdoors? Can I just water from the top and let it drip out the bottom? Will I need to water every day? What if i mix it with something that retains moisture better?

My phals have been really happy in the bark mixture I'm using but a lot of insects are also happily living in it. Here in Florida, no matter how much I use sprays or insectisides, if you grow plants outside they are going to get bugs in them.. lots of bugs. So, I'm hopeing the bugs won't find the s/h quite as comfy a living space as bark, which is their natural habitat.

[quiltergal]

Gwen what you've just described isn't really s/h. You'd just be planting in LECA and watering as usual. S/H requires a reservoir either in the bottom of the pot with drain holes drilled approx. 1" from the bottom, or in a saucer of some kind. When you fill the pot with water and nutrient you will have an inch of water that remains in the pot that the LECA wicks up and provides constantly to the root system.

[Bmorepaph]

I can testify that pests such as fungus gnats have absolutely no use for the inorganic properties of Primeagra or LECA. After transplanting a majority of my plants to Primeagra I noticed that this annoyance abrubtly disapeared. The gnats flee ASAP!!!

[sparkieixii]

i hve also noticed with changing my plants over i no longer have the ant problem that i did have with the bark mixes

[Ray]

THANK YOU Terri!

One thing I try to stress is that semi-hydroponics is an entire, alternate culture method, and not just a medium or pot design.

Thinking otherwise will lead to a lot of confusion and probably failure.

[quiltergal]

You're welcome Ray! How's your hand doing?

[philoserenus]

im a heavy watering person on my side and all my phals are indoors in hydroton but without the reservoir and they do great for me since i water every few days as they dry out. being outdoors, i dun see any issues with or without the reservoir (without one might even make it undesireable for mosquitoes). and then again, i grow a few in true s/h with a reservoir ^^

[Gwenchanter]

Sorry Terri! I guess I didn't do enough research about it but i will certainly never refer to the round ceramic medium as s/h again!

Thanks to the other posters about their great results with insects. My major pests are the little gnats, ants and mosquitos, so this should be great!

[quiltergal]

No need to be sorry Gwen. We're all still learning here. I know lots of folks pot everything up in LECA, and water more often than they would with normal media. In FL if it rains a lot this might be a great solution if you're growing outside. I don't think I would mix with other media though.

[Gwenchanter]

Ok sounds good. I like doing experiments, so I bought a pot with three phal clones in it (Brother Pirate King x Taida Rose) All three are exactly the same but the pot is very very rootbound as it is about a 5 inch pot with three blooming phals in it. Anyway, what I thought i would do is after the blooms die, I would seperate them, put one in LECA, one in a mix of LECA and other stuff and one in Better-Gro Phal mix (which contains no LECA). Then I would grow them in the same place and treat them the same execpt give the LECA a little more water and see how they do!