Probably you won't know until you try.

i heard people wrap their strep pots with wet long stemmed sphagnum and put them into bigger clay pots in summer to cool the roots.

Generally streps do better with bottom watering than with wicking - they need to dry between waterings. A friend of mine grows great streps on wicks - but they are not on mats but on reservoirs - so more air coming to the roots and she also lets them dry a bit before refilling the reservoirs. They do good in Oyamas - again with letting them go dry. I am thinking the same approach can be used with s/h.

I.

One of my students tried this (with hydroton) and the strep was dead in about a month. It was a very nice set-up, but the plant just hated it. It started out as a big healthy plant. It was Emily, if my memory serves me - the strep, not the student.

Thank you for the input. Semi-hydro takes all the guesswork out of watering for me. Before, I damaged many plants with my inconsistent watering schedule. Now, I only want to grow plants if they can be grown in such a way. If I ever find any streps, I'll probably try it out. They're very beautiful plants.

I know very little about hydro or semi-hydro growing, but if I were to suggest a variety that is the most resilient to experimenting with, it would be 'Nerys'. Strep 'Nerys' is the toughest and most forgiving strep I grow. It is an older Dibley variety and is often available on eBay.

Karen

I'm actually trying this out right now! I'm trying to root a strep leaf in water, and also I'm going to try a baby strep with high humidity (domed) and no initial access to the reservoir at the bottom...so we'll see how it goes!

I do not think you will be successful rooting a strep leaf in water - it will probably rot. You can try to root it in sphagnum moss, perlite or vermiculite - - or just a plain Cornell mix. When the babies develop a root system - you can try to move them to the hydroton - or whatever media you plan to use. You probably need to dome it it first - and open when it will start growing. Streps have high requirements of an air access to the roots - so potentially semi-hydro is a good approach. You can try to grow them in a sheet moss - it will also provide a high evaporation and cooling. I think one of the gardenweb members double potted her streps in a summer - put the soil growing streps with pots in a larger clay pots with wet sphagnum in a spase between the plastic and clay. Porous clay provided the chill.

I agree, a light fast drying mix for streps (with std watering practices) makes a WORLD of difference, I don't see constant wetness working out well.