steve lucas's recommended mix would be good.
quote:
we primarily use a very loose soil mix with 30 % Miracle Grow Moisture Control Potting Soil combined with 20% high quality peat moss, 40% orchid potting media that has hard wood, charcoal and gravel mixed with 10% Perlite⢠that is combined and mixed thoroughly with a hand full or two of cedar mulch along with finely cut spahgnum moss. The idea to include charcoal is to increase drainage but also to take advantage of the tiny air spaces in the charcoal for growing beneficial microbes. It helps with water retention, as well. If you have some good compost feel free to add it. Small pieces of charcoal can be purchased from any good orchid supply.

by the way, exoticrainforest site is back in operation!

Here is a link that might be useful: great info on growing anthuriums

This post was edited by petrushka on Sat, Oct 4, 14 at 20:58

Thanks a bunch. Think I could replace the peat moss with coco coir ?
I hate the fact that peat is insanely hard to wet once dry.
Or maybe have any ideas on how to re-wet efficiently ?

I tend to avoid using peat moss. I prefer coco coir. Some people say it has too much salt in it and needs washing before use. I produce my own so not an issue, but something you should perhaps keep in mind.

i've been posting links about coir recently in houseplants forum - it's still on the 1st page (what nurseries use to plant things in) - it's pretty lengthy.
there was a study comparing peat vs coir medium growth for anthurium 'lady jane' - which is a flowering anthurium, but req. for hookeri are similar.
seems it's ok to use coir dust (peat) - you can also use coir chips, they're similar to bark in usage.
in the study they were using it with half bark.
i think adding some chopped up long fiber NZ sphag (like for orchids) should be very good too. it rewets easily and does not compact. and it is sort of like leaf litter in the trees.
don't bury the crown though.
i think most rep suppliers now rinse coir well. but you can soak it over-night just in case.
i got magi-cal supplement for my aroids: seems they love epsom salt once a month and need extra cal (if coir is not pre-treated with calcium, you might need to do that with soak overnight using gypsom, not lime: like adding lime for bark).
the reason they need more calcium has to do with them being epiphytic and growing often on lime-stone substrate: bacteria usually helps them to assimilate Ca in nature. indoors you'll prolly need to supply it though. that is a sep issue from coir needing extra Ca treatment initially.

Here is a link that might be useful: study coir vs sedge peat for sev plants

I have a Anthurium plowmanii That I grew from seed that is grown in Passive/Semi-hydro in Long fiber sphagnum moss not mixed with anything.

oh, dellis i'd LOVE to talk about how long it took to reach what size,etc.
do you have any pics? like 12mo, 2yrs progress?
i sprouted a.plowmanii a few months back. i have 2 little seedlings going. a month ago they went into 3" cups mostly in nz lf spagh with may be 40-50% perlite and on tiny acrylic yarn wicks for semi-hydro. i put a thin layer of small-size scoria on the bottom too. and they are under bottle domes with bottle top unscrewed. i am planning to keep them like that for quite some time. i've got some pics from the web of relative size 1yr/2yr , so i have a rough idea of increase in size. but what about after that? how big do theyget indoors and how many leaves they produce each year?
they're similar in culture to a.hookeri, so i hope OP will forgive my sidelining for a post or two? please?
i posted in another thread 'aroids form seed?(65 posts-the long one ), but there's nobody there with a.plowmanii. may be you can add a post there?

That orange triangle is 7" tall and wide, about 18cm for metric folks. I think it's 4 or 5 years old. I don't really remember. This thing has been smushed up against a window for a couple years so it might have grown better if I gave it more space. The longest leaf is 29" (73cm) long. It has flowered 5 or 6 times.

Planted in just spagnum, nothing mixed in, no wicks. I usually keep an inch or two of water in the white container. I have had to replace the bucket it's planted in twice because the roots have broken through.

Pic 2

Pic 3

i think this size is called a 1gal pot, but it has slits on sides, it's an orchid pot! i think slits is a very good idea! i have some of those i can use!
i know orchid people say that in lf sphag you don't need to fertilize, but you prolly can give it some epsom salts once a mo (1tb per gallon).
how long does one leaf live?
29" is pretty big...can you say roughly how many leaves it produces in one year? does flower once a year or more?
i think yours can prolly use more light though. i am keeping mine in NW corner of a west window with west and north corner, so it gets bright light from north side and it's behind some other plants, so it gets dappled western light for sev hours. though i've seen a. hookeri and a.cubense in fairchild gardens in miami, fl grow under very heavy shade, under dense tree canopy.
i am watering mine by hand for now, until they get bigger. i am scared to actually use wicks yet, afraid they'll be too wet.
clusty,
you prolly can put it in orchid bark, but i'd add some sphag to it too, since bark can dry out too fast by itself, especially if pot is on the small size. but bark is good to give roots air.
perhaps phalaenopsis mix will be good for you: phals like to be moist somewhat, so there is usually a lot of bark with some charcoal and perlite and some potting soil (peat) in the mix.
can you post a pic, to see how large the plant is?

The bucket is a two quart (Two liter) paint bucket, not a gallon. I melted the slits using a soldering iron with the tip replaced with a piece of copper rod that was filed into a blade. I used to drill holes or cut slots with a saw but it made the plastic too brittle and would crack too easily.

I don't know anything about orchid folks saying you don't need to fertilize if you use sphagnum. Your plants still need some sort of nutrients to live and grow. I use a hydroponic nutrient solution and maybe once a year I think about adding Epsom salt.

To be honest I had know idea how long the leaves live. A couple of the lower ones have been around a long time. It produces two or three leaves a year.

The window this plant is in gets full east morning sun for 5 to 6 hours a day depending on the time of year but this plant has been buried under my big monstera and squished up against the glass so it just hasn't had room to spread out its leaves. We also had a bit of a cold snap in the last few days so it might, among other problems, have some cold damage.

I don't understand why you're going to so much trouble with this mix or that mix and the wicks. It really doesn't need to be that complicated. I just put it in the sphagnum and placed the pot in a couple of inches of water and never let it dry. Except on a few occasions when I've been traveling for two or three weeks, in always sits in water. I have been thinking about re-potting it in a bigger bucket and now that I've pulled it out to take the photos I probably will.

This time I will either use LECA or sintered glass media rather than sphagnum but only because the moss will break down after a few years and I don't want to bother with it again until I have to. The glass may be a little too light cause it seems to be mostly air so probably LECA will be the way to go.

Anthurium plowmanii prefer dryer conditions than many other anthuriums but as long as enough air can circulate around the roots they seem to be fine with lots of moisture.

yah, 6-7" pot like yours similar to size to std blk nursery pot is actually 2.5 qts but is referred to as 1 gal pot when sold. i don't know why, may be they refer to dry mix by volume?
i am actually not going to any trouble with mixes, i was trying to pull some different recommendations that i know of for the OP, as alternatives to consider or not.
i grow a lot of my plants in steve lucas's recommended jungle mix, which is a bit different in proportion then the 1st link i posted: as this is for epi's specifically. as i keep the supplies anyway for many-many plants i have, mixing a slightly dif ratio for epis's is no trouble at all for me.

my reason for wicks is one and only: long absences when i cannot monitor the plants and refill the solution. at extremes last year i calculated water reservoir qty for 2 months unattended for various plants i have: i had to do measuring tests sev months before. now THAT was a lot of trouble! 95% of my plants were totally fine and some of them are water guzzlers even at 65F.
i know that a.plowmanii is the most 'drought tolerant' of other birds nest anthuriums, so that's why i will be adding more scoria for them, when they get bigger. scoria absorbs excess water and then slowly releases it to the roots, it will be able to keep lf sphag just slightly moist and not drying up for a long period with water-wicks. but leca or hydroton will provide the same.
lf sphag is anti-bacterial anti-fungal AND has nutes and decomposes slowly - so it's many aspects that make it useful. and it's the closest to leaf litter they normally live in. that's why i'd use it.
i am slowly expanding into 'specialty plants': more aroids, more broms, more orchids, more tropical ferns and other more difficult to maintain plants, but all requiring even moisture. they often require specialty mixes to do well.

So I repotted my giant anthurium in a 13" pot.
As you can see the previous 10" was jam packed with roots, so I guess it was high time.

Was also a perfect opportunity to pass some less than perfect orchid mix I did not know what do with :)

This post was edited by clusty on Wed, Oct 8, 14 at 23:01

wow! that's a beauty! it'll probably take quite a bit of water!
can you measure the size of longest leaves?

Longest leaf is a little under 3 feet.

Any idea how large does this plant become?

Sorry about taking your thread for a short side side up above.

This plant, if it's true A. hookeri and not a hybrid, should stand about 4 or 5 feet tall, If it's a hybrid its anyone guess. Either way you have have a beautiful plant.

What mix did you end up using? Steve's jungle mix?

I followed more or less the recipe for Steve's mix.
No perlite, but vermiculite since I hate the white floaty stuff ( I know they are not fully interchangeable ).
The orchid mix contains mostly large chunks of coco as well as some small bark, that I scraped off the bottom of a few bags.

dellis, thank you much; and it's all my falt at that!
hm-m, using vermiculate instead of perlite, is not a good thing. it decomposes and compresses very fast, loosing aeration. small scoria would be a better subs. but what's done is done. with coco-chips you should be all-right.
see, a'ruffles' is problematic, since there is a. hookeri ruffles and then there is a. plowmanii 'ruffles' - which is MUCH MUCH larger. the care is the same though. a. plowmanii is perhaps more drought tolerant.
and they look quite similar. here's a.hookeri link; you can search the same site (that's steve's site; but he passed away sev years back) for plowmanii and compare. i think plowmanii has longer petioles, while hookeri spring right from the base. so i'd say yours is hookeri.

Here is a link that might be useful: a. hookeri at exoticrainforest

I read the description of hookeri. I leaning towards hookeri since the flower is white not red

Hey,

I noticed this morning one of the fresh leaves got a big ugly spot on them.
Any clue what it might be?

I bought it like 10 days ago and it stood in the car (15deg ) for about 4h. Is it maybe some delayed sign of cold damage ?

Is that 15C or F? If it's F then I'd say cold damage, and it's a wonder there's not a lot more damage.

clusty is in z10 - so can't be 15f, has to be 15C. i would say don't drop them below 18C.
but that rip in the leaf looks like physical damage: must've ripped it on smth...

15c for a few hours shouldn't be an issue. Maybe a bit of sunburn if it was possible that the sun light could have been magnified somehow. If it was 15f, it looks like the leaf was against the window and froze.

There's a patch of damaged tissue above the tear so I suspect there is more to it than just physical damage.

I just checked the member page, Clusty is in Canada, don't think they have a zone 10 there. Unless, Clusty moved and forgot to change the member page details. But for sure, wouldn't be any cold damage at 15C. In that case I'd say sunburn. Behind glass the air is very still. That leads to very hot spots where the sun is hitting direct.

Zone 5b and indeed it was indeed 15C.
The spot is about 3 feet away from a NW window. I moved it a couple of feet further away.

Thanks for the info.