Mutant:Listen to Mikes advice and get rid of that sphagnum. It just keeps things too wet. I never use it, except sometimes in connection with phrags but then on a very limited scale. Living in Sweden, you probably have the possibility to get out in the woods - or a park etc and find some moss. Look for a springy texture and make a mix like that of Lance Birk, ie 8parts bark, 2parts(compressed) moss cut in pieces. I use scissors for that so that it eventually end up as strands of perhaps 2cm to an inch, and finally one part of sand. Find a playground and take some sand from that
. Mix well and moisten. You get a quite springy compost that may have to be packed a bit into the pot but it last for years. Personally, I tend to add gravel and perhaps limestone to the mix as well. With bigger plants it is good to have some weight at the base.
Rick: You touch into an enigma that has puzzled me for quite long. Many reports claim that paphs do not grow into the baserock and that the geology in many cases is more or less insignificant. Roth is supposed to be one such. Others like lithophytes obviously are exposed to the geology, my own experience using marble chips growing medium indicates that eg vietnamense tolerates limestone well, but roth not. The effect is stunted rootgrowth on else healthy plants(that does not grow much but looks ok). Even if marble is not ultrabasic, it has a bit of the same high pH and I would thus not expect that just altering to Mg minerals makes such a difference. Since I have plenty of roth seedlings and access to olivine grits( olivine is a magnesium silicate with some iron, one of the prime minerals of ultrabasic rocks, closely related to serpentine) I will do some tests. But that will be future when my roth flasks are ready for potting. However, since lots of people have success growing roth in more acid environments, Idoubt that this is the solution
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