My first impression with S/H

[DavTom]

Hi all,

I want to share my first impressions with S/H.

I have just 10 orchids (6 Phals, 2 Bulb, 1 Cattleya and 1 Dendr). I have repotted all of them from lava rock to S/H about 1 month ago.

I use RO water and a cocktail of dry salts fertilizer similar to the K-lite of Rays. The plants do all have supplemental artificial light, with (above) optimal PAR and DLI.

Today I have removed the plants and the leca from the vases as I have modified the set-up to embed a mini-faucet (see pics below) in the vases. In this way I can water/flush plants without the need to move the vases as I can drain the vase with a small air-tube pipe (the one used with air stone in the aquariums) that I connect to the mini-faucet when needed.

So. I was able to see the roots of all the plants. Well...I was very much surprised by the amount of new roots that all the plants have developed in such a short time. And most of the new growth is well below the leca surface, so I could not imagine that from what was visible.

I read everywhere that the transition to S/H requires some time to develop new roots, so I was not expecting such a nice growth of roots. But maybe the transition from lava rock takes less time.

Anyway, the Phals are doing best. All of them have developed many new roots deviations from existing roots of 2-3 cm each; second best is the Cattleya. This surprised me as I read that Cattleyas require usually more time than other orchids to adapt; 3rd place the bulbs and last one the Dendrobium.

It seems confirmed that when moving to S/H some of the old roots die (in my case about 10% died so far but probably more will die); that new roots grow as a deviation from older roots or as completely new roots (to be noted that none of the older roots grew any straight extension so far in my vases).

In terms of leaves, all of them are growing a few new leaves, but nothing extraordinary here.

That's it. I thought it might be of interest for some of you.

Cheers,
Dav