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This is a subject which I have thought about quite a bit in the last year or so. Practically any potting mix can be used for Disas as long as it allows good aeration and water retention and is able to compensate for water that does not have the optimal pH of around 5.5 to 6.5.  I have tried a number of different mixes and I know that others have also tried a range of ingredients.  Some of the possible mixes are:

	Equal parts of peat moss, vermiculite, shredded redwood bark, and perlite with a small amount of fine charcoal thrown in.  I used to use this mix exclusively.
	Equal parts of perlite, peat, and vermiculite.
	Equal parts of peat moss and #3 perlite.  I have also used this successfully.
	Long fiber New Zealand sphagnum moss.
	Coarse sharp or acid sand. This is not beach sand.  With any sand, be sure to check the TDS first.  This media is used almost exclusively in South Africa.  See Dr. Vogelpoel's article under special topics for further info.
	Equal parts of composted bark and pumice. Ron Maunder and Betty Cullen in New Zealand use this mixture.
	Equal parts of pumice and coarse peat moss.  I have used this successfully.  For best results, I run the peat moss through a shredder first to get a uniform particle size.
	SuperSphag either plain or mixed with perlite.  This is my present medium of choice as is explained in the next few paragraphs.

The main thing is that whatever you use, it should be readily available, acidic and provide good aeration. For small collections where time spent repotting is not an important consideration, long fiber New Zealand sphagnum moss is a simple and proven material that is universally available.  The main problem with it is the fact that you have a hard time repotting as the fragile roots get entangled with the moss and unless you are very, very careful, you will break or damage the roots when you try to separate the roots from the moss. While I know one commercial grower who uses it exclusively, the amount of time spend repotting will increase dramatically as the size of your collection grows.   A 5" pot that had a number of offshoots once took me almost a half hour to completely untangle.  When you get over 25 to 50 plants, you can appreciate that you would really like to find a better way.  When you all get over 500 pots, you will consider giving up Disas before trying to repot them.  There is a better way!!
In the summer of 2000, when I was deflasking way too many flasks, I noticed that I was having some losses with the usual medium in which I deflask seedlings. This was coarse washed sand. A long time ago when I was just raising Phals., I used a product called SuperSphag for deflasked seedlings.  It worked really well on Phals and I used it exclusively for that purpose.  I tried it on Disa seedlings when I first started trying to grow Disas but didn't have  much success mainly because I didn't understand the other factors involved.  I was deflasking and then leaving the seedlings in a warm room under lights.  I didn't realize how cool the Disas liked it and cooked them.  Of course, I blamed the moss.  I tried it again mixing it with 50% small perlite and suddenly my deflasking  losses decreased dramatically.  Not only that, but the plants seemed to grow faster and were more vigorous. In fact, the Disas that I deflasked at the end of Summer into SuperSphag/perlite are now several times the size of the seedlings that I deflasked into washed sand as much as 6 months earlier. I had already decided to use SuperSphag/perlite exclusively for my seedlings right out of flask when I went to New Zealand in January 2001.  In New Zealand, I discovered that not only were most of the successful growers using this reconstituted sphagnum moss but their results were fantastic.  The best Disas I have ever seen were grown in this reconstituted SuperSphag.  As a result, I am switching over most of my plants to an equal  mixture of  reconstituted SuperSphag and #3 perlite.  This is the mix that I would currently recommend.

SuperSphag is a product prepared from New Zealand sphagnum moss where the moss is chopped and cleaned so that all that is left is the leaf which is dried and compressed into pellets.  To use, you simply reconstitute and fluff up and then use it like chopped, regular  sphagnum.  I take about 520 grams and put it into a five gallon plastic bucket to which I add warm water almost to the top.  After an hour or two, I take the bucket and dump it into my cement mixer (which is only used for my potting mixes).  I add a heaping 5 gallon bucket of #3 perlite to the mixer and turn it on.  After a couple of minutes, I dump the mix into a plastic storage box in which I have melted a number of holes so that any excess water can drain out.  That's it.  Simple, easy and the plants love it.  It takes less than 10% of the time I previously took to prepare my 4 part Disa media.  The best part is that when it comes time to repot, I just tip the plant out, hit it with the sprayer and the mix just washes away from the roots, leaving them clean, undamaged, and ready to repot!

	<This is what the dry pellets look like.
After reconstituting, the sphagnum looks like this>
	< You can just fluff it up by tossing in a sieve. It is important to fluff the material up again after reconstituting.  In NZ, they sometimes use a paint mixer in an electric hand drill to fluff it up again.
Or you can use a cement mixer to mix it up. In New Zealand, they use the product straight but I noticed that when you top water, it gets packed down too tightly so I use a mix of equal volumes of SuperSphag and Perlite to open the mix up more and also to cut down on the cost per pot.
This is what it looks like in the pot.  This pot is being bottom watered and you can quickly tell if the pot is getting enough water by the appearance of the surface.

I was so impressed with this stuff that I ordered a half a ton of it even though it, like all sphagnum moss, is somewhat expensive.  If you would like to try some, check the supplies page.