Rick
Well-Known Member
In my experience, CHC is the best medium I have ever used for most epiphytes...cattleya's, oncidioids, vandaceous, and dendrobiums love it....on repotting, after several years, the medium is packed solidly with roots. On the other hand, phal's and pleurothallids hate it. For terrestrials, its OK as an addition to a cymbidium mix. For slippers, phrags hate it...I gave up on using it for paphs. On repotting, paphs will do really well, then decline. In all fairness, not all paphs..multiflorals like philipinense love CHC...but others like haynaldianum hate it. Barbata hate it....insigne types and cochlo's tolerate it well enough...brachy's and parvis do Ok in it, but delanatii hates it. Overall, I just use bark based mix for all slippers now...but CHC exclusively for most epiphytes. And, yes, I soak it thoroughly, at least 3 times...5 gal water to 1 gal CHC, with the second soaking conatining MgSO4 and calcium nitrate......Take care, Eric
My experience with CHC is similar to Erics, however, my collection is mostly paphs, and its not a big collection, so my multis are in CHC while I'm still playing around with various bark mixtures for Barbata. I get my CHC from Robert's Flower Supply, who tell me that their source is Sri Lankan. At one time Sri Lankan was superior to Mexican since it seemed that Mexican CHC had problems desalting no matter how you tried to rinse it.