In his books on orchid cultivation the late Australian J.N. Rentoul, advocates for potting mixes containing twigs and leaves, primarily based on oak, casuarina etc. to supply "food" for the plants. Anyone that has had experiences with such mixes?
Rentoul wrote a series of books covering almost any aspect of orchid growing during the 1980'ies and I have been able to aquire most of them. Anyone in this forum that has had any experience with his way of orchid growing? Some of his ideas have been advocated for in this forum as well, the use of blood and bone was obviously one of his tricks, another one is to add shredded leaves and twigs.
Personally I have mainly used (traditional) bark mixes with perlite and moss, and am quite happy with it. However there is something that lack in these mixes. I will now describe an experiment that I started a long time ago and unfortunately details are lost but here is the essence: Some 10-12years ago I made a planting into some old plastic boxes approx. 25x35cm 15cm high with drainage holes in bottom and side walls. Two of them; in one I put some micranthums I had, in the other one a collection of henryanums. That compost was based on bark, moss and expanded clay with some oyster grit as far as I remember. And that is the end of the story - even during years of heavy neglect the plants are still prospering, and have flowered regularly ever since. Right now my henryanums have some 10 flowers and buds and the micranthum seems to get some 5-8 buds. All these plants came into Norway in the late 1980'ies or early 1990'ies, I got them around 1994, so I have no doubt they have been wild collected-probably from China. But they prosper in the same potting medium as they did 10 years ago, and with no signs of lost vigour. Do any of you have any good explanations to this? I feel that if we were able to replicate this one, possibly with the decaying matter of Rentoul, then much would be gained in paph. growing.
Any comments?
Bjorn
Rentoul wrote a series of books covering almost any aspect of orchid growing during the 1980'ies and I have been able to aquire most of them. Anyone in this forum that has had any experience with his way of orchid growing? Some of his ideas have been advocated for in this forum as well, the use of blood and bone was obviously one of his tricks, another one is to add shredded leaves and twigs.
Personally I have mainly used (traditional) bark mixes with perlite and moss, and am quite happy with it. However there is something that lack in these mixes. I will now describe an experiment that I started a long time ago and unfortunately details are lost but here is the essence: Some 10-12years ago I made a planting into some old plastic boxes approx. 25x35cm 15cm high with drainage holes in bottom and side walls. Two of them; in one I put some micranthums I had, in the other one a collection of henryanums. That compost was based on bark, moss and expanded clay with some oyster grit as far as I remember. And that is the end of the story - even during years of heavy neglect the plants are still prospering, and have flowered regularly ever since. Right now my henryanums have some 10 flowers and buds and the micranthum seems to get some 5-8 buds. All these plants came into Norway in the late 1980'ies or early 1990'ies, I got them around 1994, so I have no doubt they have been wild collected-probably from China. But they prosper in the same potting medium as they did 10 years ago, and with no signs of lost vigour. Do any of you have any good explanations to this? I feel that if we were able to replicate this one, possibly with the decaying matter of Rentoul, then much would be gained in paph. growing.
Any comments?
Bjorn