Seedlings experiment - your bets please

[Ricky]

2 weeks ago I bought a flask with 12 seedlings of P. thaianum.
With these I wanted to test some mineral substrates. I chose lava, pumice, perlite (sponge rock ?) and, as a control, living sphagnum (peat moss).

Here are the seedlings (sizes are in cm):

After deflasking, roots look very well:

After potting (sphagnum, pumice, perlite, lava):

Because the lava seems very coarse I covered it with sphagnum for the beginning.

Now I want your bets: which substrate will be the best, which one will fail?

Greetings ... Ricky

 

[Paphman910]

Perlite

Paphman910

 

[Hien]

1) sphagnum
2) Pumice
3) lava
4) perlite (perhaps you are subconsciously wanting to kill a few of them, yes?)

 

[Rick]

I think it depends on the nature of your irrigation water.

I'm betting moss unless you have a very soft water.

 

[Marc]

My guess is that live spagnum will give the best result. Perlite and pumice will be competing for 2nd and 3d and lava rock will end up last.

 

[Ricky]

I think it depends on the nature of your irrigation water.

I use osmosis water with complete fertilizer (incl. Ca + Mg) at 600 µS/cm.

 

[Rick]

I use osmosis water with complete fertilizer (incl. Ca + Mg) at 600 µS/cm.

Do you fertilize with every watering? Do you know the pH?

 

[Ricky]

Do you fertilize with every watering? Do you know the pH?

3 times with fertilizer, 1 time without it.

The pH is unknown, but since I changed to that fertilizer, my orchids (incl. Paphs) grow much better.

 

[biothanasis]

I think it depends on the water conditions too! If you can balance watering to each case, then all of them will survive...

 

[Ricky]

If you can balance watering to each case, then all of them will survive...

This could be difficult: sphagnum is always wet, perlite and pumice look the same being dry or wet, only lava changes his color when getting dry.

I will keep all 4 substrates wet to see if the air between the substrates will save the roots from rotting.

 

[biothanasis]

Hmmm... I see...!!!

Good luck and let us know

 

[cnycharles]

from what I've read from a few people that are growing thaianum, they said that their media have brick chips sand and other coarse things in the pot. so, whatever drains the best if you have good humidity

 

[e-spice]

1. Those are cute seedlings!
2. Live sphagnum, pumice, lava rock, and perlite in that order.

 

[eOrchids]

Spaghnum.

 

[SlipperFan]

So much depends on how often you water, and how wet the medium stays. Too wet and they will all rot. Barely moist is what I'd aim for, which might mean different watering schedules for different media.

 

[Rick]

I think sphagnum moss has magic juices that promote awesome plant growth. It also seems that no matter what species of Paph and where the adults roots end up, there always seems to be some moss nearby.

How many habitat descriptions start out with "moss covered bolders", "cracks in wet, moss covered cliffs", the base of "moss covered trees"????

Growing in completely inorganic material is pretty much just semi hydro or full hydroponic. I've seen it work too (for adult plants), but haven't seen many try seedlings in it. Maybe Ray will check in on this.

 

[Ernie]

Hmmm, I'll go with live sphag as the winner too.

The compots I've had grow up the fastest were honestly in red lava pebbles in semi-hydro though. I have zero experience with thaianum.

 

[s1214215]

Be careful as I find this species does not like to be wet. In nature its growing in rock rubble and not in the ground at all. I grow mine in broken brick, broken stone, pebbles and coarse sand, with very little organics. I often let them dry out a lot between waterings.

It takes humidity well though as it grows in an area that also has Corybas, and Spathoglottis hardingiana and not often over 26c I was told.

Mind you, I never have deflasked this species before.

Brett

 

[NYEric]

Oh I have!

 

[s1214215]

Yes you have Eric oke: Thanks for your help by the way.

Brett