How to screen and match the particle sizes of orchid potting medium

Everyone knows that whencultivatingorchids, large-particle potting medium is placed at the bottom and small particles on top, but most bagged potting medium is a mix of large and small particles, so it must be screened. Some orchid growers use a plastic basket to solve this problem, but it is very troublesome: you have to sift it several times, and the potting medium gets scattered everywhere, which is laborious and time-consuming, and you still have to clean up, and the basket breaks after only a short time of use. I also thought of quite a few ways to deal with the sieve issue, but none was ever ideal. Once, inspired by seeing an orchid grower using a gravel sieve, I now use a set of iron wire-mesh gravel sieves, which are meant for screening stone material. This kind of sieve is available ready-made in machinery markets. The sieves generally used are 30 cm in diameter, and the mesh openings come in three diameters: 1.25 mm, 4 mm and 8 mm. The 8 mm one is hard to buy, so 10 mm can be used instead. If you want to cover the pot surface with a layer of fine soil, buy another 0.5 mm one. Each sieve costs about 20 yuan. When using them, put the smallest mesh at the bottom, then stack them in order from small to large. Because they are sieves of a uniform specification, they stack together very well and form a single unit. If you put a 30 cm flower pot saucer at the bottom, the potting medium can be screened successfully in one go: pour out the finest material in the saucer, then add the potting medium to the flower pot from large to small. If you are mixing other potting media of the same diameter, just add them separately according to the volume of the other sizes of potting medium. Because the potting medium is sorted well, this solves the problem of the top potting medium being dry while the middle is still moist, so the orchid roots I grow are very good, with snow-white roots and crystal-clear root tips that make people very fond of them. It also saves labor and time, is done in one go, and does not scatter potting medium all over the ground when screening. I often take the sieves to the place that sells power plant cinders and screen out the cinders I want, to grow some ordinaryorchid plants, or give them to colleagues to use for growing orchids (of course, they grow orchids just to enjoy the fragrance), with unexpectedly goodcultivationresults. A little experience, just for reference. (Owner of Xilan Garden)