Try using pure moss, not moss on top of bark or leca. Pure moss will hydrate evenly and dry out completely fairly quickly. Atop bark, it will retain moisture and rarely dry out. You want the media to dry completely in each cycle. Wet, dry. Daily if you can.
Sucks that you’ve lost a few of your favorite seedlings. As you know, I’ve been flasking / deflasking seedlings (many are far too young)-I’ve been thinking about doing a vid on deflasking and I’m kind of wishing I had. Might have helped save you some grief. With the sphagnum moss for even my tiniest plants, I follow tight wet/dry cycles. For the phals and anything but phragmipediums the moss gets soaked and is approaching dryness within 3-4 days. The only orchids I can keep continuously moist in moss are the phrags-I put some phals with the phrags to see if the continuously-moist conditions would work out better and those phals either died or progressed very slowly. I’m sure your goal was to find something easier than 2X/week watering, but that’s what I’ve found works for: phals, cattleyas, and an epidendrum hybrid. If you want to talk more about seedling care feel free to DM me and we can trouble shoot.
I deflasked mine 2 week ago from Roellke, both are Phalaenopsis, put 2 in moss en 2 in seramis, it's to short to say but both are doying fine. Keep my fingers crossed. Thank you for another great video, keep them coming.
Glad to hear they're both doing well! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you🤞😀! I had a comment from Dustin, who does alot of flasking, saying he let's his moss seedlings follow tight wet dry cycles. So that could be where I'm going wrong with some of the moss seedlings, thought I'd pass it on in case you experience any of the same issues 🙂
@@TheOrchidRoom Thank you Annabel, i just saw a link on facebook to his page on how to treat the seadlings, he puts small bark and then put moss on the top, he is a master in growing seedlings so perhaps i'm gone make some changes.
Great video. At this point I will not be doing any seedlings as I don't patience for that. I do have patience for the slipper orchids and other orchids that I do have but they are much mature and that is as far as I will go. But one never knows down the line or so. Enjoying this journey with you.
Thanks Kim! You never know, flasks are a great learning curve, but I'd say it's easier just to buy deflasked more mature seedlings from nurseries, still a great way of trying new species but with less hassle 🙂
Saw the seramis seedlings and thought ‘hold up! They’re like mine’ 🤭 with the exception that my top layer has developed a bit of algae ... I repotted once only last year to refresh the seramis because of the algae layer, but I’m not touching them at this point because ‘hooray’ they 2/3 are doing something & I’ll let them do it without interfering. 🤞🏼 for stronger seedlings in a few months! I’ve been wondering ‘what the hell were you (me) thinking?!’ 🤦♀️
I'll do the same, they clearly want a moist top layer, no fooling them! I'm sure I'll get algae at some point, but I'll change the seramis out like you when that happens, leaving well alone otherwise! Glad yours are finally happy too! I spied that Roellke has some interesting dendrobium flasks 😀😉 Including Victoria reginae, griffithianum and harveyanum.... And some Anguloa..... Maybe they'll tempt me to try again in spring 😂
you're luckier than I am, I lost most of the coelogynes (but they were much smaller, a couple of fimbriata seem to want to stay alive even though they have lost all roots and leaves, but the usitana are all dead), only the epidendrums really did OK, but they refuse to push new roots
Oh no, really sorry to hear that! 😢 Apparently we should have stuck to phals and cattleyas 😂 It seems like some seedlings are much more difficult than others! But flasks of new and interesting species/ hybrids are just so tempting 😅
@@TheOrchidRoom Well I think the fact that they were so small (no pseudobulbs were bigger than 5mm) did not help at all, even pleione I don't deflask so young. I wonder if I would have had better result with full kanuma instead of a mix with LECA
I know moss works for some when dealing with tiny babies, it didn't work for me either. I think I'll use a seedling bark, which is more equivalent to the seramis, the next time I try.
You have pretty high humidity right? I wonder if it works better where people have low humidity, it's worked for me before but with much bigger seedlings and probably lower humidity at the time.... All a learning curve I guess, seedling bark sounds like a smart move!
@@TheOrchidRoom our humidity outside varies, quite a lot. Seedlings I tend to keep in the house, where the humidity is 50-60% all the time (without a humidifier) and the temperature is stable. I can see where moss might be better in low humidity environments. My problem with it, I think, is it is hard to keep it an even moisture in a small pot. It can be damp in the morning and bone dry by afternoon. With seedling bark, I can spritz the top every day using a spray bottle and it stays very evenly damp.
Hello can you tell me here I can gind your transparent plastic pots for hydro culture you always leave water in the pot or wanted for you there is more to put back you put a bottom of water sorry for you ask for all his explanations I make hydro culture in vase its gives excellent results but your method is also good too thank you for informing me super beautiful your orchids
These are just small disposable plastic drinking cups. Semi hydro involves always leaving a reservoir of water at the base, I have a few videos specifically on semi hydro if you are interested.
Hello, I was wondering how long it took for your plants to adjust to semi-hydro? I have a few that I not sure about.... so thinking about going back to bark on a couple or maybe they have just not been long enough yet. Some have turned yellow leaves from the bottom and then dropped them. Any help would be Great.... Thank You
Depends on the individual environment, and the orchid in question. My phals for example don't really have any transition issues. The common one is the old roots dying off and waiting for new roots to get down into the media before they adjust. If they're dropping more than 2 leaves each then there may be some root loss going on, are they actively growing new roots at the moment? Orchids pull energy from the older leaves when they're stressed, pulling out all the nutrients and then dropping the lower leaves, in order to put more energy into survival and to create new structures, like roots and new leaves.
Hi! Unfortunately I do not, I very rarely get keikis, and if I do they tend to be basal growths so I don't remove. I did have one on the top of the cane of a Dendrobium kingianum recently, I waited until it had 6 or 7 roots ranging from 5 to 10cm long, then removed by gently twisting the keiki off at the node it was joined onto the mother cane and put into a cup with some loose sphagnum at the bottom. Some roots stopped growing but then branched into the sphagnum, and it's started more new roots and a new growth now so I will soon pot it up into semi hydro. The thing to consider is that until now, keikis will have mainly had aerial roots. So putting them into a very moist media may not be the best idea initially, I think a staggered transition is a good safe bet. I think the roots initially stopped growing on mine because it had suddenly had it's main nutrient source (the mother plant) taken away, and was having to think for itself about what to do before making more roots and continuing work on it's previous ones. Hope that helps!
@@TheOrchidRoom Thanks for replying, My Keiki’s aerial roots are about a foot long. 2 of the Keiki’s are side by side and 3 aerial roots. So 1 keiki has 1 long root and the other has 2 aerial roots. I’m scared to separate them. The mother orchid is still doing well, so I still have time.
I had them in a water bath to start with to raise humidity, but with a fan next to them for air circulation. I then had rot issues so removed that. In my environment sphag and bag causes rot, I need air circulation to prevent this. In some environments with low humidity that method may work,but I would always favour a method with air movement 🙂
My previous experience with deflasked vanda mini palmer x denisoniana was that they loved moss, think it depends hugely on the type of seedling and the current environmental conditions 🤷♀️ Those seedlings are now in synthic and loving it, but they are one or the more moisture loving types of vandas... It seems like in this instance, self watering with moss was not the way to go.
