E.J.H wrote:
Hi guys. Might I suggest that you remove the bark from the stick, throw the
stick away, flatten the bark as best you can and mount your plants onto the
bark. A stick without bark is simply a stick. I'm not familiar with
'grapvine' bark...

Grapevine bark is thin, stringy stuff. Your advice is irrelevant to
it.

Cork, a popular mounting substrate is, of course, bark.

J. Del Col

I have a lot of those "self-pruning" maple trees in my yard, and can usually
go back in the woods and find a de-barked piece. I find that all sorts of
plants, but especially tolumnias, just love it that way. Using the bark is
useless, as it breaks down rather quickly.

--

Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.com
Plants, Supplies, Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info!


"E.J.H" wrote in message
...
Hi guys. Might I suggest that you remove the bark from the stick, throw
the stick away, flatten the bark as best you can and mount your plants
onto the bark. A stick without bark is simply a stick. I'm not familiar
with 'grapvine' bark, but orchids generally require a reasonably rough
surface to enable the root system to gain a hold. There are not many
nutrients that last in any bark as this is the 'skin' of every tree that
is shed on a regular basis so your plants will require more regular
feeding to survive. Although orchids are ephiphytes which grow 'on' things
rather than 'in' things, their roots do penetrate a living tree to obtain
nutrients beneath the outer bark surface. Another method I have used
successfully for dens.and cats. is hydroponics with a regular feed and
sunlight and shade as normal but utilising the little red bubbles of
volcanic rock as a base for them to grow on. This eventually forms a nice
'skin' of green moss which looks absolutely great when the plants are in
bloom. Hope this helps
Enjoy
Ted

"Gene Schurg" wrote in message
news:Y9fmg.9991$1G2.5093@trnddc06...
Last year I purchased some small seedlings (phals mostly) that were
mounted
on a stick of grapevine. I thought to myself, self you could do that.
You
have plenty of grapevine growing in the woods. I went out and harvested
a
big vine (and rescued the tree) and cut it up into 10-12" segments. Over
the past couple of months I've mounted more phals on these with a pad of
sphagnum. The plants are doing wonderfully but....

The roots are not clinging to the grapevine bark like it does on cork. I
contacted the vendor who sold the plants on a stick to me and got a reply
that they are seeing the same result but the plants still do OK.

Today, I took a pocket knife and removed the bark from the grapevine and
made a nice smooth stick. I remounted a couple of the phals on the
smooth
stick to see if this improves the adheasion.

Does anyone else have any experience with mounting on grapevine?

Good Growing,
Gene

E.J.H wrote:
Hi guys. Might I suggest that you remove the bark from the stick, throw the
stick away, flatten the bark as best you can and mount your plants onto the
bark.

Might I suggest you think about this a minute? Other than cork, most
bark is too fragile to be used this way. I mount orchids on cedar
shakes. They have no bark, yet orchids grow well on them. It's
probably possible to get orchids to grow well on slabs of styrofoam.
I've had them do OK on pieces of nylon paint stripper pad.

J. Del Col