For the love of pebbles

When you start growing your orchids and your collection is pretty small its always best to keep to the safe and tried out method. Bark and stuff, you also have sphagnum moss people and full water culture. Everyone grows their plants differently.

I am no different and I am sure, my dear reader, you are also.

After 8 years of mixed bark medium I couldn't have been happier with the results, till I got a plague of fungus gnats. I mean a plague, nothing worked, you got these buggers everywhere including wardrobes.

So I pursued my love for pebbles. Seriously. Semi hydroponics has been a blessing.

Let me explain quickly what is semi-hydro:

As mentioned on Wikipedia: Semi hydroponics also known as passive hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil, peat moss, or bark. Instead an inert porous medium transports water and fertiliser to the roots by capillary action. Water and fertiliser are held in a reservoir and conducted to the roots as necessary, reducing labour and providing a constant supply of water to the roots. In the simplest method, the pot sits in a shallow solution of fertiliser and water or on a capillary mat saturated with nutrient solution. Since routine maintenance is much simplified, passive hydroponics can reduce the labour required to maintain a large collection of plants.

Coming back to English, semi hydroponics remove all organic media and replace it with say baked clay pebbles. The plan is grown in a container which either sits in a dish always filled with water to a certain level or has a closed reservoir of water at the bottom of the pot.

In my case I preferred to have a pot with a closed bottom that has holes on the side on the height of around 1 and a half inch.

The baked clay pebbles media was ridiculously cheap! The medium was called Aqua ClayBag canna and it was 45L for £16. That was enough to re-pot 45 plants.

Also you just have to love the aesthetics of round brown balls in a pot. I just love how it looks.

Now you may ask why I haven't tried this method earlier? Well, there have been two reasons: 1) the growing media I had used previously was fantastic and my plants were big and beautiful showering me with multiple flowers. 2) I got very averse to semi-hydro after seeing the videos of a YouTuber MissOrchidGirl. I will not apologise for it but I find her extremely patronising, shallow and boring and the knowledge she is providing is half the time wrong, thus for a long time I stayed away from this growing method just because of her. I'm actually pretty sure there is a lot of people who feel a distaste toward a lot of things orchid-wise because of her.

All this aside I would like to tell you about my experience:

1. The move

The hardest part in semi hydroponics is probably removing your plants from the old medium. You need to thoroughly clean the root system and remove any dead or dying roots. It's good to use surgical alcohol or cinnamon on any wounds.

Now the easy and fun part, as I said use enclosed pots – good idea is to go to a home goods store and get a plastic jug they are dirt cheap and perfect for pots and come in different sizes.

I do not agree with the obsession of growing plants in glass as it really can cook the roots.

As I said above drill holes on 1 and a half inch from the bottom (around 4cm) make sure there is enough of them that the water can drain. Now time to pot the plants in the mix.

I found it easy and fun, but make sure you use gloves and have good air circulation as the clay balls can be covered in dust.

Second advice once plants are potted flush them with water so the excess of dust is flushed out of the water.

2. Keeping the water levels

Now I heard people say you need to top up the water and once in a while flush the plants. Well I do it wrong then as I flush them all the time. The instructions online I read said you should make sure the clay pebbles are flushed well and saturated properly to hold and transfer moisture. I don't think that just topping the water will achieve this.

When it comes to fertilising I stick them in the bathtub and use seaweed regularly and occasional grow booster. Now I must add I havent actually used any fertiliser for the first month. I don't know why but I just had this gut feeling that I should let the plants do their thing with just water.

2. The Light, The Air, The time

I know that different growing methods don't work for everyone. I have moved all of my plants, all of the 100+ orchids which mostly are paphiopedilums and phragmipediums into semi hydroponics.
Also i don't agree with the common notion that paphs are shade loving plants. Oh noo! I live in the UK so my SUN strength will definitely be weaker even on a hot day than it would be in Spain so i'm quite lucky. Therefore, all my paphs are getting direct either morning or afternoon light. In example my paphiopedilum rotschildianum is getting grass green foliage as a sign it's happy. Many professional growers will actually tell you that if your phrag or paph is getting these grass green/yellow foliage it means it's getting a good amount of light. Of course if you have niveum then too much light will suck big time.

When I did my culture quite possibly I was lucky as I done it just at the time when the weather started turning to warmer days with more sun which helped as my plants were already in the new grow phase.

When it comes to air all my plants are next to a window or in a large room that has windows therefore there is always air movement. Something I highly advise for you!.

But based on my observations there are some points that are worth fallowing when doing the move.

• Enough sunlight as a culture switch is stressful for a plant and lack of sunlight will slow down its recovery and may lead to health problems
• Sprint to summer season as the temperatures outside are warmer, there is more sun and the days are longer therefore the plants will be in active growth and this is important when moving culture. You want your plant to be able to grow new roots and establish itself in a new environment.
• Air movement because lack of it is the cradle of all health problems for the plants and eventual risk of rot and mold showing.

Now, people have different opinions on which orchids grow best in semi hydroponics. I can say all my plants for the last, almost, 3 months have been doing amazingly well, even to the point that plants that were struggling in a normal mix are doing better than ever.

The plants I have in semi hydro are:

• Paphiopedilum – are doing very good and very thirsty
• Phragmipedium – some are doing fantastic recovering from total root loss, another are growing flower spikes.
• Cattleya – growing like mad and throwing flower spikes
• Oncidium – growing slowly but steadily
• Odontoglossum – growing slowly but that due to a full flowerspike covered in blooms
• Encyclia – growing strong and fast and having flowers.
• Phalaeonopsis – actually growing better than ever. I used to have problems with them being under-watered and now they are growing as vigorous as ever.

Now there are something i'd like to highlight that I have read and seem to be untrue.

• It's not true you have to water less often. Actually I noticed I top up the water more often especially in the summer. Maybe in the winter it will be differently.
• Paphiopedilum don't grow well in semi-hydro. This is very untrue for me, my paphs are doing fantastic and some of them are forming flower spikes now.
• You will get mold in the pots. This is also not true in my case. I provide good light and ventilation for my plants and also the water is clean. NO to old standing water. Ew!

In the end i think it is safe to say from my point of view that semi hydroponics is great, especially for me. From a perspective of time i can see now that with my older medium there were disadvantages I weren't aware off including the plants being underhydrated which I never thought possible.