New planting medium for orchids, a new choice for orchid cultivation

I began trying to grow orchids with maifan stone in 1995. Several years of practice have shown that growing orchids with maifan stone is entirely feasible. The orchids grown with it are easy to keep alive, easy to root, produce many shoots, grow robustly, bloom relatively easily, have beautiful variegation colors, and show significant leaf variegation evolution. In late autumn of 2000, I used maifan stone plus a small amount of leaf mold to plant 3 seedlings each of Yingqin Su and Chinese Cymbidium Song Mei. By the end of 2001, Yingqin Su had produced 2 shoots and Song Mei had produced 4 shoots, all of which had grown into large seedlings with gratifying growth. Maifan stone is a medicinal rock, named by ancient Chinese medical scholars because its appearance closely resembles a barley rice ball. In modern times, we have gained further understanding of maifan stone: it is a late-stage product of magmatic crystallization differentiation in the calc-alkaline rock series, belonging to quartz porphyry or quartz monzonite among igneous rocks, with quartz or alkali feldspar as its main component. Maifan stone is relatively complex in structure. Observed under an electron microscope, there are 2600 to 2800 pores per square centimeter of surface area, belonging to a porous special structural type of rock. Maifan stone contains nearly 60 kinds of major elements, trace elements, and ultra-trace elements. In the periodic table, of the 90 naturally occurring elements, 27 are essential for the normal growth and development of plants and animals, of which 11 are major elements (oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, aluminum, sulfur, phosphorus), and the remaining 16 are trace elements. All 27 of these elements are present in maifan stone, and their contents are relatively moderate. The content of harmful elements such as lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium in maifan stone is much lower than in crustal igneous rocks. The content of radioactive isotopes uranium and thorium is very low. The structural characteristics and chemical composition of maifan stone determine that it has adsorption, health-promoting, medical, biological activity, regulating, growth-promoting, deodorizing and freshness-preserving effects, etc. Orchid-growing planting medium should have the following properties: rough structure with good water permeability and aeration; slightly acidic, free of pollution, and free of latent pests, diseases, and viruses; a certain water-retaining capacity; and containing certain major elements and trace elements. Maifan stone granules (including those with diameters of 1 to 3 mm and 3 to 5 mm) basically possess the above conditions. The only shortcoming is that they are not slightly acidic, and this can be adjusted by adding a small amount of acetic acid. When growing orchids with maifan stone, the maifan stone used has a diameter of 1 to 3 mm. Sometimes it is used alone, and sometimes some fresh or fermented sawdust, peanut shell charcoal, pine needles, or broadleaf tree leaves (all decomposed) are added, etc. Using maifan stone granules alone can be used for cultivating variegated-leaf orchids. I have used it to grow the following varieties: Cymbidium sinense Jin Wu Man Tang, Huang Dao, Shuang Long, Rui Huang, Li Ming; Cymbidium ensifolium Jin Si Ma Wei; Chinese Cymbidium Hu Ban, She Pi Ban, Zhong Tou variegation, etc. With maifan stone granules mixed with other planting media, I have grown the following varieties: Cymbidium sinense Da Tun Qi Lin, Wen Shan Qi Die, Lü Yun, Guo Xiang Mu Dan, Tao Ji, Hua Guang Die, Shen Zhou Qi, etc.; Cymbidium ensifolium Renhua Da He, Renhua Kuo Ye Bai, Long Yan Shi Ba Kai; Chinese Cymbidium Lü Yun, Da Fu Gui; Lianban orchid Chun Xue, Da Xue Su, Xiao Xue Su, Chun He, etc.; Cymbidium kanran Shuang Xi, Yingqin Su, etc. When watering, follow the ancient maxim of "better dry than wet." The orchids grown not only produce new roots and new shoots, but their leaves are also glossy green and shiny. As for variegation, white variegation is like snow, yellow variegation is like gold, and green variegation is like jade. What is gratifying is that they produce many shoots, and the shoots grow strong. If fertilizers such as Lan Jun Wang and Xi Shuo are further applied, and the principles of "better less than more" and "apply thin fertilizer frequently" are followed, the results can be twice as good with half the effort. In addition, when using other planting media to cultivate orchids, one can also water with water treated with maifan stone or spray the orchid plants with this water. Because maifan stone has a significant dissolution and release effect, the aqueous solution has all the properties of maifan stone.