Best garden mulch according to redditors

What really?

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Edit: I went to the Home Depot website and there's nothing like this when searching for "cocoa" in "outdoor" or "building materials". No other available categories were close to what this would fall under. I was hoping to be able to link for people.

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Edit 2: Apparently, it can be a danger to dogs like u/ritatome said (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cocoa-mulch/; https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/cocoa_mulch_and_dogs)

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And you can get it at
Menards

Amazon

Walmart

Rakuten

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FYI Menards is like 1/3 to 1/4 the price of everyone else.

There is no wonder spray.

If you use a plate of light excluding material around the juniper, it will keep the clover away and stop competition. Composting clover underneath will give a nice boost too.

Old carpets, rugs and even Old Curtains are great for this. Classic home-grown organic control.

Of course you can spend money too and use "Tree Protection Weed Mats, 24", 3-Pack" on Amazon.

All the best - and never ignore a 4 leaf clover!

My jetsetter tomato looked like that for a day when I transplanted it to a pot, but it was probably due to shock. If you need to water everyday, make sure to use enough fertilizer and enough gypsom (calcium). Most of my potted tomatoes had blossom end rot last year because I did not use any calcium additive.

If it is really hot and dry, water it deeply but less often and use mulch. I bought some of this for my raised beds and it works great. The soil underneath is always moist and I live near Sacramento, CA which has been warm lately. My black krim and champion are 4ft tall and have green tomatoes already.

You'll end up with a warmer, wetter root zone, which may be an advantage or a problem depending on what you're starting with. It will reflect back some light, but IMO not enough to make a difference (which is also backed up by the many commercial growers who are trimming their lower branches/tomato suckers/whatever rather than putting down reflectors).

There are white and colored plastic mulches specifically intended for this purpose, but I haven't seen many comparisons vs. traditional mulch (or nothing) just a lot of bold claims.

Personally whenever I'm unsure about Internet advice I just try it on 1/3 of my plants and see what happens, documenting the changes and results. Of course that assumes you have multiple plants that are clones or otherwise true-growing such that this is the only variable being altered.

Everyone's environment is different so anecdotal info can only take you so far. I know you're focused on your current plants, but in an ideal world each grow goes a little better than the one before. Whenever I try something new the goal isn't "will this plant be better?" but "should I do this to all of my plants from now on?"

I have very little experience with the Nobiles so I'm only passing along what I've culled through my own research. There are at least 3 instances of growers that I came across that took Nobile twins or alliance mates and grew them under 2 regimens.

a) In the greenhouse, under filtered light, and watered throughout the year.

b) full sun starting in march - all the way to November with lots of watering along the way followed by a winter rest where they cut the watering down to some insane frequency like once a month.

a) grew fat bulbs and colored out to dark green but threw keikis

b) turned a sickly yellow but during the wintering phase it threw out a ton of spikes.

go figure - deep green = sick, sickly yellow = happy - who knew?

As for fine fir bark this is what I bought:

Again I have different ratios of sphagmoss to perlite to bark depending on how fast I think the media is drying out, but for the smaller plants in my collection that small fir bark was a key addition to my closet full junk.

I've tried sphagnum moss from chile, from new zealand, from the nursery, and from home depot...the new zealand stuff is far and away the best I've found...it's fluffy, uniform, long, has insane water retention ratios - oh and did I mention it's fluffy? The crap from home depot - all it did was compress under the weight of the water and push out the precious air the roots needed to survive so that home depot bag went in the garbage. I bought bricks from ebay (just search for sphag moss) for like 5 bucks - that one brick expands to like 20 or 30x its packed size (super fun to watch btw). If you're in a pinch they also sell sphag moss at big box pet stores in the reptile section for some insane markup.

As for the PH of my water - there's a couple of things going on there, the alkalinity of my water (as you pointed out) and the PH level of the water. If the AOS guidelines I read are indicative of what's going, the high PH water is a nothing burger, but the alkalinity is a big red flag and one that isn't easily fixed.

My PPM measurements are well within what would be considered acceptable, but alkalinity has caused some weird buildups on a few of my larger plants...they look like salt buildups but I'm convinced it's all the minerals in the water. I haven't gotten around to it, but I'm about to try some AOS guidelines to test the substrate PH and PPM levels because ultimately that's what matters most to the plants so I'll share that info back when I get some time.

As for fertilizer - don't overthink it - just figure out which of your plants likes a little bit many times, and which wants all of it but every so often. I read some AOS literature that convinced me that the concentration matters less than the frequency of application, so in some/many/most cases - it's just safer to feed a little bit just more frequently.

For your last set of questions:

>My biggest question is how long do I maintain the winter rest with these new orchids and when do I change the routine?

nov - mar/april'ish - this only applies to the dendrobium nobile and similar deciduous alliance mates, the other stuff I would continue to water

> Should they be kept in low light and allowed to dry out?

I wouldn't drastically change the amount of available light - it was more the drop in watering and temps that forces the Nobile into dormancy, and don't freak out if it throws leaves - it's a deciduous plant after all.

> If so how dry and should I be watering thoroughly or just misting?

If that were my plant in your conditions - For the Dens and in particular the Nobile, I'd do a quick flush every week and a half to two weeks...watch the pseudo bulbs for shriveling - those will be your indicator as to whether or not you're on point. Just don't overdo it. For everything else wet/dry cycles are fine. You can tune your mix to extend the damp cycle so you're not watering them every other day to counter a low humidity environment.

> Come spring do you gradually start watering more?

I would imagine so - figure starting in March (or April for you) start introducing them to more and more light until it's safe to push the Nobile back into full sun.

> Should they all be given a balanced fertilizer once it's time for the spring growing season?

This is one of the things you end up figuring out for yourself. When starting out - it's better to under fertilize then over fertilize (over fert => deaded orchid) , and that's partly driven by your availability. This is supposed to be fun and engaging for you, and the moment it starts feeling like work, it will cease being fun for you, you'll start neglecting them and they'll die.

It's easy to get excited when you're figuring all this stuff out - but try to imagine how interesting this will be for you 3, 4, 5 months in after dutifully tending to your crop and watching them do absolutely nothing (reality check there).

So short answer is - figure out how much time you want to devote to tending and watering them then tweak your growing parameters to fit that schedule as best you can. I do 1/4 strength solutions weekly for the active growers and that's worked out well for me.

For me - I scan my small collection multiple times a day, which is precisely the wrong to do (orchids benefit more from benign neglect yet suffer under constant tending - go figure), but that's what makes this fun for me. I feel like misting is harmless but so addictive and the Phal I rescued from the onset of bud blasts tells me I'm doing something right with all the misting it gets.

Oh and re: humidity, tons of hygrometers on amazon $8 shipped

Worth its weight in gold just so you have a handle on something that can and often does cause problems. If you can't do the humidifier there are other more localized options that don't involve raising the relative humidity of an entire room but we can jump off that bridge when we get to it...Give your collection a few weeks to stabilize and acclimate and just work on acquiring a few low cost supplies to get you ready for spring.

Oh and this
> 1) When you say peat for the cymbidium, do you mean straight peat moss and not long fiber spaghnum? Should I be letting it dry out in the meantime or keeping it somewhat moist?

Peat moss added to the mix not straight peat moss though I suppose that's entirely possible. Terrestrials don't like going bone dry, you want them moist/damp ideally, not wet all the time.

Again take what I said with a grain of salt and seek a range of opinions, there are people in this forum far more qualified than me to give you targeted advice...it just so happened that I recently went through nearly everything you're going through right now so figured I'd share what worked for me.

Good luck!

I believe it is bought at our local Lowe's (or something similar like Home Depot, although I am fairly sure it's from Lowe's) although it can be a bit expensive. It does, however, work extremely well so I think it is worth the investment.

Amazon has it for about $18 per bag, but I think it's about $13 in store.




Edit: Correction- it was not bought at Lowe's, but at a local nursery.