Mark_OK wrote:

"Duncan" wrote in message
news:uUZ2j.58789$PE.45178@pd7urf1no...

....................................

My collection got upended by a tree falling on my shade house this
spring and scattering my precious LECA medium all over the yard. Some of
the plants I repotted I put in river gravel - it was about the same size
as the LECA - just to see how they would do. I know it won't wick but I
sure can't over water them! Everything thrived through the summer, maybe
because our yearly rainfall was double what we normally have here in
Oklahoma. .......................................

Anybody use gravel? Are there long range problems with it?

In the mid 70s, when I bought my first orchid, I looked at it every day
and it never did anything. I was young and impatient. I read the one
page culture sheet handed to me with the plant and it told what could be
used to pot orchids. One of the choices was gravel.
Needing some sort of interaction with my new plant, I dumped it out of
the pot it was perfectly happy in. I borrowed some natural pea gravel
from an aquarium that we weren't using at the time. I potted that little
Phalaenopsis in what, I learned later, was an over sized pot for the
size of the plant. It grew up, bloomed, and lived happily in that same
gravel and same pot for over 25 years. Of course, every few years, I had
to dump it out, break off the dead bottom with dead roots and pot it
deeper again. It finally died last year due to the Phal disease that
killed all of my other Phals too.

The point is, an orchid can do very well for decades potted only in gravel.

Steve