He stated the obvious, Vandas like to have their roots free in a tangle in and around a basket or a mount, they refuse to grow in a pot full of bark or other media. That tangle of roots needs to be watered frequently and dries out quickly. Daily during normal weather, 2 or even 3 times a day during our heat waves. Neither Sphagnum moss nor any other growing media is acceptable to the plants.

He places a small tangle of Spanish moss in and around the root ball. As the plant matures and the roots elongate and hang down the Spanish moss does the same and a beard of roots and Spanish moss results. This provides moisture retention for the roots without the smothering effect of Sphagnum moss by retaining free air movement around the roots. The roots stay moist longer after a watering. If the Spanish moss overwhelms, its easy to pull the excess off and maintain the right balance.

I have never tried that before but it made sense to me immediately. I plan to spend the rest of the morning inoculating my Vanda root bases with starter amounts of the stuff of which I have plenty just hanging around. It might also work with other mounted plants whose roots, instead of hugging and enveloping their mount, produce a hanging beard of roots. I will also place a small amount of SM on their root ball.

Spanish moss by the way is not a moss but a colony of Bromeliads that maintain relatively huge pockets of air between their strands. It also blooms occasionally with a faint fragrance. Here is a link on info for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_moss

It will be new to me, has anyone used this technique and what's the take on it.

Nick

It reduces the amount of time, the amount of water needed and the multiple times a day needed to grow and bloom this family in the g/h in zone 6. If they are grown inside of a home, it is even more important to use something to keep the roots from drying out as the heat cycles off and on.

Have fun draping you Spanish moss around, please share pics with us.

Brooke

No they don't. You can elect to grow them with the long roots dangling and the constant spraying to water and fertilize them but refuse? No, they do quite well with a lot less work if you do contain them. It isn't for everyone but refuse, no they are quite happy.

You are eliminating a technique that might make it feasible for someone not willing to do the extra work or who can't be tied to multiple daily waterings.

Brooke

We actually have it draped on the non sun receiving walls as a humidity booster too.

On a last chance are a couple of plants of Ascda. Prima Belle, must of had them for at least 12 years and they just exist, never look happy and of course have never flowered. They now are in empty pots with Spanish Moss.

Contrast that with Vasco. Five Friendships x Ascda. Peggy Foo. small seedling in mix.Purchased as cool tolerant. Perhaps it just should be called tolerant because it is in bloom . Yeah!

That rule of less and more arid mix as you go towards the tropics applies.

It isn't right for you but it might be right for someone who doesn't live in Louisiana.

Congratulations on your eleven vandas in bloom not in 'stuff'. I have one blooming, three just finished blooming, one is a seedling to young to bloom and the remaining three will bloom shortly - all planted in 'stuff'.

Brooke

It appears general consensus that Vandas like to have their roots dangling free in the breeze. Our speaker has an extensive collection and said that he never succeeded in keeping a Vanda happy in a pot full of stuff. He adds the Spanish moss as he believes it allows the roots to stay wet longer which makes sense.

Brooke writes:

'growing happily with lava rock in their baskets. When a root escapes and it gets long enough, it is inserted back into the basket.'

His comment, and I fully concur, is that if a plant is sending roots out of the pot it's screaming for help. 'Get me out of here'. Stuffing the roots back in the pot it's trying to escape from is not the answer. Since it does not want to die it will tolerate the treatment but seems to be asking for the opposite. There are some smaller vandaceous plants whose roots are not adventuresome and they prefer to be in a ball of Sphagnum moss. They would obviously do well potted.

On the work ethics of a ball of Spanish moss, I concur that under the surface of 2" or so of healthy plant there exists a dead zone. There is only healthy useful moss on the surface. One therefor should not let the mass of SM get too big. I periodically pull it down, separate the dead from the living plantlets and let it start all over again.

I don't think there would be any competition for nutrients between the Bromeliad and the Orchid as neither are parasites and both benefit from the nutrient that is sprayed on them. Neither is invasive on the other's territory.

SM grows like a weed in Florida and Lousiana but does not grow well in California. Much too arid for it's taste. Since my collection is 95% plus mounted which gets watered frequently, it honors me by growing with enthusiasm. Other members of our society cannot grow it, as watering it once a week won't do it.

I inoculated the root balls of all of my Vandas and a few others today and will watch it over the next year or so to see how it does. Going to be hard to tell as the plants are growing well and blooming with the current management, now a new wrinkle is added. Unless they go downhill, a year from now they will still be growing and blooming well so it's going to be a totally subjective decision whether this does any good.

I firmly believe in throwing as much Dodo on the wall as is available, some will stick and do good. I'm really just vigilant about doing harm. I have been feeding them birth control pills for years, do these powerful hormones do any good? Who knows, they look healthy so its obviously not harming them. This is probably going to be the same way where I expect them to do well with SM and also do well without, provided they get good care.

I hear rumors that SM is very popular in San Francisco, maybe some one from up there has a comment.

Nick

I also tried the Horse manure trick, which has been extensively written about on this forum. It works real well, definitely with Cymbidiums. My only complaint and the reason I stopped using it, is that it disappears. After 1/2 year the only thing left in your pot is undigested straw, every thing else has washed out. Since I hate to repot, this is obviously not the way to go. I still have a garbage can full of the stuff in my growing area and add it now and then on top of the very few plants I have left in pots, mostly the Cymbidiums. It also makes excellent tea, that I do on a regular basis and spray it on everything. Watch out for yellow rain at my place.

20 children? You got to be kidding, I stopped after 6 although I was really just getting warmed up and could have easily had 20 or more if it were not for that outdated monogamy concept.

Nick

Brooke

In the dryer greenhouse there were great, long roots and they stored enough water in the velamen. The plants I moved are doing much better while the plants already there continue to bloom.

And I have tried endless number of ways to get them to
thrive - glass vases, clay pots with layer of moss on top, basket with treefern chunks. I gave up. My cattleyas can handle the freezing cold as well as the 0% humidity perfectly. I'm sticking with those.

I'm sorry if people don't like the idea but it works for me as well as other people. I am not the first person to grow a vanda in lava rock and I did not invent this method. I stole the idea from the vendor I bought my Vanda tricolor from potted in an 8" clay pot - full of lava rock. After it bloomed, I was going to put it in a basket but when I broke the clay pot to remove it, I found tons of big fat beautiful roots.

I don't mind watering something once a day but I will not water anything multiple times a day.................except for my five mounted masdies.

Brooke

This second picture is Asco. ampullaceum which is in a 6" wood basket.

This is Renanthera Singaporeans 'Scarlet'. This is not my plant but one I am babysitting for a friend. He could not get it to bloom where he had it in his g/h plus summers outside, watered once a day, maybe. He let me put it in the basket/lava rock combo and it is blooming a second time in less than six months. The picture is from the first bloom time.

Again, landscape fabric in the bottom to keep the roots from growing out of the bottom. When a root escapes from the sides, when long enough I put them back into the sides of the basket. You can see some of the lava rock visible in the pictures.

My humidity is all over the place depending on the season. Yesterday it was sunny, both vent fans were running and the humidity was under 20%. Today is misty and cloudy and the humidity is 80% - tonight it will be 90%+. In the summer even with the additional humidity from the cooler wall, I still have to run misters under the tables part of the time.

Angeleyedcat I hope you can adapt the idea to your growing conditions.

Brooke

Now that they are indoors - they are a little more resistant to drying, so I think I will keep the moss - plus,I think it's growing ansd looks cool - I have been contemplating adding some Tillandsias for the added look, but haven't got around to it yet.

Nick - I do not doubt your success - but why the heLL would you give vandas and any plant birth control bills? They are combinations of estrogen and progesterone and as far as I can remember, plants wouldn't have those receptors to take the drug up anyway, and I am almost positive they cannot convert estrogen into a plant hormone, even if all hormones are cholesterol backbones (sorry I work in academic medicine and do drug research and development, this bothers me). I know plants make phyoestrogens, but can they metabolize mammalian estrogens?..if so that's creepy.

Try some "Vandas" that are more tolerant of abuse.
Neofinetia Intergenerics
Vascostylis hybrids
There must be lots of them
Papillionanthe vandarum. Tough species orchid

Sartylis Blue Knob. Sarcochilus intergeneric

Sorry out of time, more later

There several reasons I give them these hormones:

1) I have an endless supply of them

2) If Ahnold, our guvernator, got to be Mr Universe 6 times and fearless leader of our state twice, on the back of massive amounts of steroids, these powerful hormones may do some good.

3) Some of our senior members, who have been growing orchids longer than they have been alive, think it's a good idea.

4) Yours is the first intelligent comment I have had about the practice. If you are certain they do no good I'll stop as I have zero evidence it's beneficial. I don't think it's doing any harm either so it's similar to some of the Vitamins we spend billions of dollars on, they make for expensive urine, my OCs would make expensive run-off if I had to pay for them. Since our government subsidized Pharmaceuticals are paying for them I have no problem with expensive run-off.

Seriously, as I said I have never had an intelligent Nay or Yea on the subject until your post. I am sure I do many things that are redundant this probably being one of them. If you think plants are unable to benefit from the mammalian hormones I will stop using them and add them to the drinking water of my 11 year old grand daughter instead, she is beginning to take shape much to the horror of her father.

Thanks for the info.

On a different subject, I am amazed at how many people believe in 'stuffing long roots back into whatever'. To me long roots like that are a sign of a healthy plant and I encourage it. I remember a heavily rooted Phaeli, which when it got unpotted, had not a single healthy root inside its pot. They were all outside. There is a message there.

My Vandas have a long beard of roots and I like it that way. I don't think anyone has argued that adding the Spanish Moss will do anything other than to allow the roots to stay wet a little longer. With the same amount of watering this should lead to a benefit or one could water a little less often.

Nick

If you are referring to a phalaenopsis living on aerial roots without any roots inside the pot, you over watered it and killed the roots in the media. I have many phals mounted with dangling roots but they only get watered once a day. It is an old wives tale aerial roots avoid a pot with bad media. Roots don't have a brain or eyes.

Roots growing long are a sign of a healthy growing orchid whether they hang free or if they get 'stuffed into the pot. I prefer to 'stuff my vanda roots in a basket with lava rock. You grow yours and I'll grow mine but I will also feel free to offer an alternative method to anyone who hesitates to be tied to multiple waterings per day and doesn't live in an area where they can grow outside.

Brooke

You live and learn.

Nick

I prefer to grow my vandaceous mounted on either treefern slabs or driftwood, with wonderful results. Vandaceous I grow this way seem to love burrowing their roots in the treefern or in driftwood crevices.

I grow a number of vandaceous in big clay pots or baskets with some loose chunks of medium in it - treefern chunks, big pieces of charcoal and lava rock...I cant water every morning, so this set up works for me!

From Orchids April 2008

Now,kind of off topic, but maybe intersting nonetheless. Nick mentioned that some of his orchids were "on the pill" in an above post, and since then I spent a few days looking for some informaiton online and dear I say it, in books.

I found out that phytoestrogens (plant-produced hormones)like soy have structural similarity to mammalian estrogen, and our bodies think it is estrogen - hence the sometimes reported side efects to soy milk, etc. While I found information on plant hormones affecting us, I couldn't find information on our hormones affecting plants. It got me thinking though, over the summer, I noticed a few roots on my vanda were growing from the stem, and were nice and plump, but short. For the heck of it, I rubbed some rooting hormone on it and they grew pretty quickly, in a matter of a week. To me, that is the only hormone prep that would be sufficient for plants; that, and gibberelic acid to make more shoots on rhodies - but whatever.

Nick, I know you were joking, but if you have a well on your property, or groundwater nearby, please consider axing the pills for your plants. I seriously think it has no effect whatsoever. I read a toxicology study a few years ago that showed measurable amounts of fluoxetine (Prozac), estrogen, and acetominophen (tylenol) in the drinking water of several Midwestern cities fed by the Great Lakes. Of course, we all contribute to it every time we pee; but what can you do?

Thanks for reading, just trying to make everyone aware and I don't mean to single you out Nick.

I know that Ahnuld is no longer using anabolic steroids, wonder what he did with his stash. Maybe I can get hold of that and feed it to the plants.

Thanks everybody, this was one of the few threads that fundamentally changed a conception I had. Prior to this I was completely convinced that Vandas grew best in situations where their roots were totally free. Our speaker has the same impression stating that he never successfully grew them in 'stuff'. Apparently this is not the case.

Nick