I saw Vanda teres ( now in a different genus) grown that way at Kandy Botanical Gardens, in Sri Lanka - so long ago that it was then called Ceylon ( about 1967 ) when I first visited .
More recently, maybe 2006 or 7 , I bought a lot of Dendrobium Hybrids from a nursery in Bangkok, and that eas an enormous place : they mostly sold cut flowers , and measured their sales in the number of tonnes sold each month- I recall that it was 3 tonnes the month I was there . They told me that I could select the plants I wanted and gave me a list of bench numbers to visit for my order . There were almost 2000 benches, each maybe 12 metres long , and - this is the point - their growing technique was to chop the top off a green coconut and drop a seedling inside..Coconut milk is a well known ingredient ro add to Agar in flasking - I gues it is full of nutrients.
So, nothing new under the sun, as they say .