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I was just repotting an orchid and ran out of orchid bark
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It happens to the best of us. But I do have mulch
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Can I use that? I mean, they're the same thing, right? Hi, I'm Amanda Matthews and thank you for watching this video at Orcadaria
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The first thing you want to know is that mulch is not orchid bark
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Orchid bark is usually pine bark. Now, when I did the research with several different companies looking for mulch, what goes into them
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the main types of trees that they used are. Eucalyptus, fir, pine, redwood, cedar, cypress, and others
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In the past, it was redwood, but because of the degradation of the forest, then they just, florist
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forest, they decided to not use redwood. And even more recently, they discovered that
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Redwood does cause allergies and lung problems, respiratory problems. So redwood is out, but the main bark that is used in orchid bark is pine bark
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It will degrade. It is organic, but it holds up about two to three, two to four years, depending on the brand that you buy
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Or if you make it yourself. That is, in essence, orchid bark
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Now, what is mulch? Moulch is completely different. Moulch is that extra layer that you're going to
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going to put on top of very fine grass or flower seedlings
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It's going to help it retain that moisture and not freeze during the winter
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So in the spring, it can grow up, a blossom, and become that beautiful lawn or beautiful
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flower bed that you've been working on. The purpose of mulch is to degrade
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That's the huge difference between mulch and orchid bark. Moulch does four things for the soil that it's protecting
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first is it kills weeds and young seedlings that are trying to grow up. The second, it raises the
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humidity and traps it on top the soil so that when it's time for the flower to come up and the
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mulch has already degraded, it will have that humidity in there. And it also traps heat. Remember when
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the whole design of mulch was to sit on top this layer of soil, but I'm never to be mixed in
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You don't find mulch underneath the soil. You'll find it on top. When this mulch comes into
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contact with plant tissue That where the problem stays Let say you want to use it as a top layer and you have your plant and you have mulch around it touching the stem of the orchid Where that is touching remember the mulch will absorb enormous amounts of
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nitrogen. Well, it's going to pull out nitrogen from your stem. And that place where the stem is, it's going to
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become nitrogen deficient. Problem is your orchid's going to try to fix that. So it's going to take nitrogen
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from the roots, nitrogen from the leaves, nitrogen from even the buds that are forming to try to
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fix that stem because a stem and the roots are the most important part of your orchid. You don't want
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that nitrogen just being sucked out of the stem. So inside your pot, what's going to happen
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You're going to start watering it. It's going to be great for the first month. Then after that
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it's not going to be so great because it's going to break down and degrade so that those little seeds
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can grow up to beautiful flowers in the spring. Now, from winter to spring, you have what
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Three, four months? That's not enough time to be repotting. I did a little research, and each company was different in what exactly went into the mulch
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but these nine things are in your mulch. Wood trips, tree bark, straw, grass clippings, shredded leaves, newspaper and cardboard
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cocoa chips, composted animal manure, rock or crushed dust, inorganic material such as rock rubber or plastic
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Really? So no matter what potting media you use, you want that potting media to hold up to stand firm to be resistant, degrade at the least possible rate
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I mean, you don't want to be repotting every six months. You're going to kill your orchids. Orchids hate to be repotted
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So you want a potting media that's going to stay in your pot and stay there until forever
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until zombie apocalypse. I don't know. So you want that potting media to be firm and to stay firm for a long time
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That's why mulch doesn't cut it. But you might be thinking there are wood chips in the mulch
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So isn't that the same thing as orchid bark? Well, no. Wood chips are actually designed to prevent
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weed germination. They have chemicals in that wood chip to hinder the growth of anything because they
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think what's going to grow here? Well, weeds, that's the only thing that grows in winter. So the weeds are
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going to interact with these wood chips and they thinking oh it warm here There lots of moisture I protected and I can grow but then they come into contact with the wood chips with these chemicals that prevent growth And that the same thing that going to happen to your orchid root
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As wood chips, and this will happen with your orchid bark too, it will absorb enormous amounts
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of nitrogen. That's why you need to use a nitrogen fertilizer. If you keep this mulch out in an
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aerated space for six to eight weeks, it will absorb nitrogen from
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the atmosphere and during this time it will become saturated where it will not need to absorb that
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much so there's a tip the other thing that mulch does is that lots of times when you buy it they want
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to enhance your garden they want to enhance your flower bed so why not make it smell like a forest
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why not put those oils in there why not put all these toxins and resins that are just going to give
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you this wonderful aromatic experience That kills your orchid. You know, for a flower bed, that's fine
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If I'm walking through a flower bed, I want it to smell nice. But I don't want my orchids to react with that
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Actually, if you want, I'll give you a secret here, a tip. There is a, I made a list of the most fragrant orchids and what they smell like
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Because sometimes you say, yay, here's a fragrant orchid, but they don't tell you what it smells like
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So if you go to my website on www.orgadaria.com, you can see a list of the most fragrant orchidiaria.com
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you can see a list of the most fragrant orchids that there are for sale, and you can grow indoors
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Let your orchid do the aromatic thingy and not the mulch. All these things for a good potting media, it just slices, you know, one, two, three, four, five, everything, it goes down and just, sorry, it just doesn't cut it
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Another thing that I found when I was researching mulch is that some companies, by law, they can't
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sell wood chips as broken down palettes. I mean, they come to a palette company and they say
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hey, you using that palette? Not anymore. Can I have it? And they cut it down and use it in mulch
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So you don't know exactly. It could say any kind of tree bark, but actually it's any kind of
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leftover wood that they're not using. You don't know what wood that is. And some of these
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woods, as I said earlier, have a high resin count, a high toxin count. They're going to release
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these chemicals inside your pot and that's going to interact with your roots. Now, if your mulch says
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specifically pine bark that what you going to probably want to go with because pine bark breaks down in about two to three years which is the time you need to repot If you can add in your potting media elements that are going to break down at the same time you don want an element that going to break down in six months and the next one that going to break down in five years
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If you put those two together, you're just wasting materials and you'll have to be repotting sooner because that element that's going to break down in six months is going to start to lower the P
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inside your pot and come to critical points which promotes root rot and which
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promotes death of the orchid roots and which promotes all kinds of bacteria and
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fungus inside your pot add elements that will break down at the same time that is
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the secret to mixing together a good potting media if you've liked this video
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please click the like button or ask a question or interact with some
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kind of form so I know what kind of videos to keep on producing in the future
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What kind of videos to stay away from? Like no, not this one, never more. Also
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I do want to say I am still working on this. This is like my pride and joy. Just behind the scenes
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real quick parentheses here. This is a tracker to how to start your orchid collection. If you
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have no idea, you're getting orchids from the supermarket and that is fine. That's wonderful. But
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this will help you go to the next level of knowing what should I do with these orchids
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For example, like phalanopsis, you can write down all the information of how you are growing it
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what the natural habitat is for the orchid. If you tried Epsom salt how much, what were the results
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It's a starter collection, how you can start your orchid collection. And it's not for sale, as you can see here
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Of course, I got it. It's written backwards. You're going to see them backwards. but it says not for resale because I am still working on it
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I'm really looking forward to that. It should be done in a month or less, not sure
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but you can go to the website and get more information on that
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If you go to www.orgadaria.com, Orchid Journey, which is the name of the book, by the way
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Okay, so you already know that you cannot use mulch. So what are you going to use
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So if you want to know, look at this video down here that talks about potting media in general
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And this video up here, I forgot. It's something else. But thank you for watching and I hope to see you in the comments below
