Ah, yes, coconut husks. What a joy! We have been growing orchids since 1975, mostly in bark mixes. Bark, most notably redwood bark, has declined in quality over the last several years. Our experience has been rotten roots and soggy mix with bark, often after only 6 months. Now, it is our opinion that any orchid which can be grown in a bark mix will do even better with coconut husks. The husks are sponge-like in that they will hold water for upwards of two weeks or more without compressing or rotting quickly. In general, the husks will last up to four years or longer under most conditions. We have experimented with several recipes. Currently, we are using eight parts medium coconut husks, one part medium grade perlite and one part #2 charcoal...the charcoal is about the size of a popped kernel of popcorn. The CH (from this point forward in our discussion CH stands for coconut husks!) are soaked for 24 hours and drained, soaked another 24 hours and drained, and then soaked for 24 hours and drained one last time. That makes three days of soaking and draining. The purpose? To make sure the CH are as clean of any salts as possible. We have heard of at least three sources of CH but we are using the CH from The Crystal Company, exclusively. No, we do not get a commission by recommending them, but we have found their CH to be the cleanest and most consistently sized. They can be contacted at the following address:
Crystal Company
P.O. Box 220045
St. Louis, MO. 63122
Phone: 1-800-845-4777
Fax: (314) 966-3831
Ok...now you have cleaned and soaked the CH. Next, measure eight parts of CH, one part charcoal, and one part perlite. Now what? Mix the three ingredients thoroughly. Then unpot the unhappy orchid from its old mix while being careful to damage as few roots as possible. Next, pot up the now “HAPPY” orchid in the fresh mix, water copiously, and then return the orchid to its growing area. The main component in our mix is the CH. We have always had good success adding charcoal to our various potting mixes in the past; thus, we are still currently doing so. Aliflor was used in the past instead of perlite, but now we are using perlite because it is less expensive to purchase and ship. We would strongly encourage you to make CH the main ingredient in your orchid mix. Currently, we have a few plants growing 100% in CH, having purchased them as seedlings from other growers. However, we are shifting the majority of our plants to the CH mix in this discussion. A noteworthy point: for rootless plants, we have found spaghnum moss, especially the New Zealand variety, to be helpful in establishing new roots.