If you have a large one allready, you can pot the thing up in allmost
any medium or mount you want. (don't use pure bark or pure coco husk,
by themselves they do not hold moisture long enough) Mist it every
morning and it will grow. Once they became adult plants they take a
lot less water. If you have an 8" basket with 10 or so bulbs of a
Grandiflora don't water it to heavy. I have a huge Grand. and I only
mist the moss around the outside of the basket and on top lightly
every morning. Then I water the basket good once a week. Any more than
that and it spits leave on the floor like an baby with a wet diaper.
I grow a ton of Stans. It is my prefered plant. I have them
everywhere, in all kinds of conditions, and all kinds of media and
mountings.
Wire baskets with newspaper liner and just moss or moss with bark and
perlite. Wood slat baskets with shreded tree fern, moss, bark, and
charcoal chunks. Big black plastic net pots. Or small Vanda type net
pots. I have used moss mixed with crushed up leaves from my back yard
(oak and popler mostly) and had great results. I have thrown baby
seedlings right from flask to pots with bark, perlite, moss, and sand
in them. Yes, regular old play sand.They seem to be able to survive
and do well under much varied conditions. I have some mounted on cork
where you can no longer see any of the moss any more, just a mass of
roots and shoots. The flowers will push through just about anything
that is not solid. I have had them bloom out over the top of a plastic
pot when it couldn't go out the bottom. The guy at Greenleaf orchids
grows all his in wire baskets with plastic liner and just the soiless
peat mix.
My personel pref. is mounting on large (1 lb. or bigger) slabs or
round tubes of cork. Evan when they are small I tend to look 3 or 4
yrs down the road at what I want the display of it to look like.
The biggest thing I have learned is keepem moist. Not soaking just
slightly damp down in the media. Good air and lower light levels at
fist after repotting. Once they are happy you can increase the
lighting to very bright. My biggest grand is in the propagation room
with all the babys and it hangs high up and about 3' away from 800
watts of HID (400 MH and 400 HPS) and it grows all year long. I have
some 4yr old runt (they were the tiny tiny sprigs left over from the
flask) Costies on a slab of cork hanging less than 2' away from the
same amount of light on the othe side of the room and they continue to
put out new shoots with out showing signs of burning.


dude

I just acquired my first Stanhopea, (S. grandiflora, though I
understand that name is obsolete) and I want to move it to a basket to
allow it to bloom.

I'm thinking of using a cedar slat basket or an arrangement using a
wire basket lined with coarse plastic netting. I would use coarse
diatomite or bark in either one. What do others in the group use? The
plant is large, and I think slab mounting might be impractical.

J. Del Col