soil

[Jim Hanger]

Hello group,

I am a amateur with Hoyas but an avid gardener.

What most folks don't realize about the Western valley of Virginia, the great Shenandoah, is we are semi-arid in the Summers; this summer being especially so with many days over 90 and behind on rainfall. We depend on hurricane rains in the Fall to pull us out of the drought.

The soil I use for the Hoyas is Faford 54 with the addition of extra large pearlite as you find in orchid mixes...also add some Turface, a fired and ground clay product used for soaking up water in athletic fields...the color is a light terra cotta.

My plants go outdoors under maples for the Summer and indoors under lights for the Winter as we are zone 6B here.

Rooting is in Turface, and Hydroton with the aid of powdered hormone on scratched cuttings and watering with a liquid microrriza used early on for a couple of waterings. There is a chain, hydroponics retail place in Charlottesville called Fifth Season where I buy the microrriza liquid concentrate called Nitrozime made by Hydrodynamics International. Their website is www.hydrodynamicsintl.com.

I might lose a few of the thin leaved cuttings from the order as they were well dessicated upon arrival. Other than that the plants look good...haven't tugged on 'em yet. I use very deep square black plastic pots that Japanese maple grafters use. They are six to eight inches deep so lots of room for stem depth.

Jim

[Jim Hanger]

[treelover3]

Hi Jim,
The group has been really, really quiet lately. Usually the group is
just buzzing with activity after we receive an order of hoya cuttings
from Australia, so I'm not sure what is going on. Could be it's just
summer and everyone is really busy.

What is your take on Turface? I've heard both positve and negative
comments on its use in container soils. I had read about a cacti and
succulent grower out west that had potted hundreds and hundreds of
cacti and succulents in soil that contained Turface and they found the
plants were not growing well in it so they needed to repot all of the
plants into their previously used potting mix. (They should have just
tried the Turface soil on a small group of plants before going whole-
hog and potting so many plants in the soil without knowing how the
plants would react to being in the soil.)

I'll have to check out the link you provided about the microrriza as
it sounds really interesting. Trees use microrriza and you can
purchase containers of different microrriza to add to the soil when
planting a tree or shrub.
Mike