Great orchid potting medium can be made at home

In myorchid growingexperience, I have tried various potting media such as perlite, pine needle soil and moss. Perlite has excellent air permeability, but it is light and easily blown around, flying out of the orchid pot if you are not careful and making a mess at home. Pine needle soil does not have good enough air permeability,orchidsdo not grow very well in it. Mossorchid growingis not bad, but in practice I found that because moss retains moisture too strongly, it more or less affects air permeability. I once placed a layer of peach pits in the lower part of a potorchidplanted in moss. After some time, when I lifted the plant out of the pot and looked, a neat new layer of tender white and delicate green new orchid roots had grown below, which was a delightful surprise and also gave me the desire to grow orchids with a better potting medium. Recently I thought that if wood, bamboo, corn cobs and the like are burned or roasted at high temperature to carbonize them, and then broken into small pieces for growing orchids, the effect should be quite good. Through practice, after carbonizing the corn cobs that are easy to find around me, I found they can easily be broken into small pieces. When used for growing orchids, I found the moisture retention is excellent, and the air permeability is naturally also excellent because of the block-like form of the potting medium. Carbonized corn cobs also have the advantage of being relatively light in weight. Dry grass and the stalks of wheat and rice straw can also be burned into grass charcoal for growing orchids. If some orchid friends in the city find it inconvenient to burn and carbonize potting medium themselves, they can also go to the ornamental fish market and buy loose granular activated carbon fororchid growing. The price is not expensive either, at 5 yuan/kg in the local market, and I believe it is cheaper in the mainland. I share this experience with orchid friends all over the world, and hope it brings success and joy to all orchid friends. Mayorchidsbloom across the land of China, and may orchid fragrance spread everywhere. (Wang Zhiyu, Xinjiang)