Bottom Heat

[Ray]

I leave them on 24/7 when getting the plants established only. After that, ambient is sufficient in my greenhouse.

I doubt the mats will have any impact on your air temperature, unless you ordered a lot of them! The single-tray size is only 17 watts.

[cdecost]

I'm a newbie. Whats S/H?

[MT-Phal]

Welcome to First Rays LLC

Once in the site, there is a link on the left side for "semi-hydro." It will fill you in on everything you need to know. Basically, it is a way of growing orchids that is arguably the best for your plants and easiest for you.

[MT-Phal]

Update:

So it's been almost a month now, and I think my phal is doing pretty well. One of the thicker roots sort of cracked on my last repotting, but it has yet to die so I'm okay with it.

I've noticed that within the media, I can see two roots which have started to regrow! The bright green tips have me pretty excited and I take it as a very good sign. I've been watering about once or twice a week. Usually, I'll do an initial flush with regular water, then I'll drain the resevoir and water with an added teaspoon of the supplied fertilizer I got from Ray. Maybe once a week, I'll fertilize with a tablespoon of liquid seaweed, or a drop of KLN.

I'll take some photos once new roots have fully established.

[MT-Phal]

UPDATE

So I saw this morning that a little bit of snow mold had grown on one my new root tips. I moved some PA out of the way and used an alcohol dunked q-tip to remove it, and was pretty happy of how easy it was to swab away. Then I realized that this certainly couldn't be the only case of mold. So I unpotted to check on the roots, and sure enough, bits of mold along my root system. I guess my open window isn't enough, and I'll be using my fan more often.

However, my biggest concert is that most of my root system is starting to rot away. Instead of the healthy green, they're turning a brown/black. Those new tips, which last week were green, are now gone. I had to trim a few places where the roots had just turned into mush. Since this didn't happen in the first initial couple of weeks of going into S/H, I was too optimistic of my phals' adaptation. My worry now, is that within the next couple weeks these roots are going to go completely, and then it'll be up to the one... new... growth... to save this plant. I have two more that are slowly poking their way out of the crown, but I'm hoping this guy grows in time and that the consequences aren't too bad.

I've named this root, "Luke Skywalker."