# My newest living wall



## ALToronto (May 26, 2014)

No slippers on this one - yet. I'm hoping to get some advice on how to get slippers growing on it. It's my 4th living wall, and the third of this general design.

In my business, I make architectural elements out of a concrete-like material, but with a chemical composition that gives it a much lower pH than regular concrete. A further treatment with lithium silicate drops the initial pH to about 9.0. this is what it looked like while it was being made:





The clamps, plywood and styrofoam are forming a basin at the bottom of the wall, to catch the runoff. The branches are from the December ice storm.

After the structural part of the wall is poured, we water down the remaining mix, add hemp fibres, and this time, some crushed olivine (magnesium monosilicate) for added magnesium. This is loosely placed on the surface and creates a very permeable surface that roots can attach to.





There is also a water reservoir at the top, with drilled holes in its bottom surface, with waxed wicks that let through only drops.

A few more treatments with acidic solutions, and the pH drops to 7 or so. The wall is ready for plants. My previous walls were exclusively orchids, but this time I decided to add some ferns, a hoya, a spathoglottis (Madagascar jasmine) and an epiphyllum. And stonecrop - a great filler plant when you need some greenery, fast. It grows anywhere.

Any soil-growing plant needs to have the roots rinsed off as much as possible. Most of them, I just tucked into the crevices between the branches and the wall. Orchids get attached with electrical cable clips. This is what the wall looked like right after I set it up for the Green Living Show.





The bottom basin has a brass fitting for a vinyl hose that drains away water into a bucket in the cabinet underneath. I filled the basin with lava rocks and put mostly anthuriums in it - they like the semi-hydro conditions.

Since the show, I moved the staghorn fern into the semi-hydro basin, where it's actually not doing too well - I didn't think you could keep a fern too wet, but this one seems to want it drier. I also added a few more orchids - three small Howeara's (Lava Burst), a Sharry Baby, a phal and two bulbo's. Still lots of room for more orchids - any suggestions for suitable slippers?

The lights are chinese-made 5W LED's, 5000 and 3000K, adhered onto a strip of aluminum foam, attached to the wall with torn-down IKEA work lamps. Not the prettiest, but functional. Fourteen diodes total over 180 cm.

Here are tonight's photos, a month since the wall was populated.


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## Ray (May 27, 2014)

Very cool Alla!


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## eaborne (May 27, 2014)

Cool!


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## Carkin (May 27, 2014)

Soooo cool!!!


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## Erythrone (May 27, 2014)

Wow!!!!!!!!!!


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## ZWUM (May 27, 2014)

That's awesome!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## MaryPientka (May 27, 2014)

really interesting!


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## NYEric (May 27, 2014)

Nice, kind of reminds me of my living floor!  pH of 7.0 for the material after treatment? What about salt retention?


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## ALToronto (May 27, 2014)

Thanks everyone! Eric, I haven't seen any salt build up on the wall surfaces. The hemp fibre surface stays constantly damp, so nothing precipitates out. And because so much water is evaporated, I keep the fertilizer to about 40 ppm total, including the salts in my RO water. There isn't much for the wall to retain. 

With this living wall, I put 3 litres of water in the reservoir every morning, and only about 1 litre drains out. So I'm well aware of the concentrating effect of the surface, and once a week I put 2 litres of plain RO water through. This wall isn't old enough for orchid roots to start growing on the hemp fibre surface, but my oldest walls, populated last August, have thick healthy roots happily growing into the wall surface. So I don't think that salt buildup is a problem. The runoff is about 350 ppm, mostly calcium.


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## SlipperFan (May 27, 2014)

Yes, very cool, and very artistic!


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## Bjorn (May 28, 2014)

ALToronto,
Did you know, if you use Calcium aluminate cement instead of Portland cement,you will not have those lime issues? While Portland cement (Calcium silicate) hydrates to calciumsilicate hydrate and hydrated lime, the Calcium aluminates hydrate to Calcium aluminate hydrate and aluminium hydrate.
Thought you might like to know 
B


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## gnathaniel (May 28, 2014)

Wow, great display! Thanks for the description and photos of your process, veri interesting. Is that Peperomia prostrata on the right side of the picture with the Anthuriums?


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## ALToronto (May 28, 2014)

Bjorn said:


> ALToronto,
> Did you know, if you use Calcium aluminate cement instead of Portland cement,you will not have those lime issues? While Portland cement (Calcium silicate) hydrates to calciumsilicate hydrate and hydrated lime, the Calcium aluminates hydrate to Calcium aluminate hydrate and aluminium hydrate.
> Thought you might like to know
> B



Thanks Bjorn! Actually, I use calcium _sulfo_-aluminate (CSA) cement, which is much more stable in a wet environment than CAC, and it too is primarily responsible for the initial drop in pH. My mineral binder doesn't use much Portland, anyway - that's why it's _concrete-like_, not concrete.


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## ALToronto (May 28, 2014)

gnathaniel said:


> Wow, great display! Thanks for the description and photos of your process, veri interesting. Is that Peperomia prostrata on the right side of the picture with the Anthuriums?



No, it's a bulbophyllum hybrid. I haven't bothered to keep the labels because these plants will never be shown or judged.


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## bigleaf (May 28, 2014)

Awesome setup !


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## iwillard (May 28, 2014)

Breathtaking!

I want one.....:sob::sob::sob:


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## orcoholic (May 28, 2014)

That's really cool. Bet you could start a great business creating and installing them if you wanted.


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## ALToronto (May 29, 2014)

orcoholic said:


> That's really cool. Bet you could start a great business creating and installing them if you wanted.



Thank you, that's the goal. My home is one big testing lab to see if this is a reasonably idiot-resistant and commercially viable product.


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## ALToronto (Jan 31, 2015)

Update, long overdue.

A few plants had to be evicted because they grew too fast and were shading/crowding the orchids. So the Madagascar jasmine is gone, so are two anthuriums, one of the grocery store phals (which is growing happily in a plastic pot), and the staghorn fern (which developed a nasty case of scale, and I didn't want to bring out the chemical weapons inside my house).












Additions are nearly a dozen catts, with two mature ones thanks to Papheteer, a coelogyne mooreana, two rescue stanhopeas, an Ascocentrum miniatum, two sarochilus hybrids (most recent additions), and most importantly - some phrags in the catch basin! I have a Don Wimber and a bessea from John M (the bessea is not doing well at all, though), some La Vingtaine seedlings from shadytrake, and a mature Chuck Acker that I picked up from the member sales table at an orchid society meeting. A China Dragon will soon join them. Some of these phrags are doing very well, some not so much. I lost two La Vingtaine seedlings to rot, and I may lose the bessea as well.


























Several plants are in bloom right now, or just finished blooming, with the flowers initiated entirely on the wall. The Sharry Baby and a grocery store phal that looks suspiciously like wiganiae are in bloom, the ascocentrum has just finished blooming, and the lava bursts usually have one or two spikes on the go at all times. Another grocery store noid phal (a fragrant one!) is about to bloom, I hope it opens up in time for the SOOS show in two weeks, where I will have this wall on display.

Now - about the lighting. The wall is hanging in a very dark part of the dining room, with no natural light reaching it in any significant way. It's lit with fourteen 5w LED's, eight cool white (6500K) and six warm white (3000K). My earlier living wall, about 2/3 the size of this one and arranged in a corner, is lit with three special LED grow lights that I got from Ray, 13w each. The grow lights are noticeably more blue, even though they have a significant number of warm white and even red diodes, and they're not as bright as 13w might suggest. So my earlier living wall, in spite of being nearly a year older than this one, has excellent green and root growth, but no plants in bloom (actually, one recently added phal has decided to put out a terminal spike, but it's the now mature catts that I'd like to see flowering).






So I will probably be replacing the grow lights with my DIY combination of cool and warm 5w diodes. I can't tell if the problem is with light intensity (doesn't seem to be at the very top) or colour temp (more likely). It's too bad, they looked very promising.


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## NYEric (Jan 31, 2015)

Thanks for the update. Why not try a Paph?


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## SlipperFan (Jan 31, 2015)

How clever!


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## Migrant13 (Jan 31, 2015)

Missed this first time around. Very unique and interesting living wall you created. Can't wait to see it With more blooms.


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## Lmpgs (Feb 1, 2015)

Interesting indeed.


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## Wendy (Feb 1, 2015)

What a great idea. It looks really cool.


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## abax (Feb 3, 2015)

Beautifully constructed and the overall effect is natural and
eye catching. I'm sorry to see the Bird's Nest Fern had to
go, but glad the staghorn has moved. I went into a commercial greenhouse some years ago that was simply
infested with staghorn and the owner was trying to sell all
the little intruders for $5 each with pests. As you experiment with different plants, the landscape changes
rather nicely...never quite the same over time as a landscape will do naturally.


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