First S/H repot and first from Sphag that wasn't horrible

[nogreenthumbs]

A few days before the 4th of July, the missus bought a few orchids. She wanted the house nicely decorated for the fourth because we had company coming, and she knew that I'd be enthusiastic about taking care of them. Among them was a Phal. Shu Long Beauty. I'd never seen a Phal with so many blooms (21 on one inflorescence with 4 branches) and 8 nice big flat leaves. The place that I bought them had 4 that were all about the same (he had a show in another town the next weekend). They had obviously just come from a wholesale nursery. You could tell the way they were potted (soft, thin plastic 'pot' with packed sphag). I think I watered it normally once after I bought it because it seemed a fairly dry. Since then I've just been misting the tops of the roots that were visible to keep them from browning in my dry environment. I also look at the roots in the pot from time to time, but the pot always seemed damp and the roots bright green. I've resisted the urge to do anything else.

I finally decided that before this beautiful plant suffers from root rot, I should repot it. I'm out of bark, but had a bag of LECA from Ikea and have been soaking/rinsing a couple of quarts for about 3 days. I just couldn't stand it any more. Getting the sphag out of the fat, healthy, plentiful Phal roots was much easier than the last two that I repotted from sphag that had a high concentration of thin Onc. roots. I was surprised at how nice the roots of the phal seemed but I guess I shouldn't have been considering the blooms and health of the plant.

I think the repotting went very well. I'd purchased some clear food containers like you'd get soup in from a Chinese restaurant from Amazon. I drilled a couple of holes (don't press too hard or you'll crack the side). I was able to squeeze and shack and tap and shift the LECA down into the pot pretty well and even found that slipping the tag down into the pot helped so I used that to further shift some stuff on the sides of the pot. I then ran the thing full of water to see what that was going to be like. The water REALLY comes out of those two holes with quite a bit of gusto! I then flushed with 25ppm mixed Peters 15-5-15 Cal/Mag. I'm a little bummed that one of the roots has about 1.5" down into the well, but I'm not sure that there's much that I can do about it, and this thing has a bunch of roots.

Fingers crossed that this goes well!

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[estación seca]

Looks great!

What I do is fill the pot with LECA to just above the drain holes, then put in the plant. This way the roots are above the reservoir. Ray writes the old roots usually die after moving to S/H because they aren't adapted to growing like this. With most of the Phals I've moved, potting them so the old roots are above the reservoir, this hasn't been the case.

[nogreenthumbs]

Yeah, I had initially done that, but I think in the process of moving things around to try to shake the LECA down in, I tilted the pot and moved some of the bottom LECA. I guess I could try adjusting things some tomorrow. I just heat to see a healthy root die.

[estación seca]

You just moved it. It's no big deal to repot it right away.

[Ray]

Yeah, that's planted too deeply, and based upon the size of the plant and it's root system, I'd consider going to a larger pot. Overpotting in S/H culture is usually not an issue, due to the superior wicking ability of the LECA.

By the way, a move out of sphagnum to constantly moist LECA is usually not an issue, as it is just as wet, but the roots breathe easier.

[nogreenthumbs]

Thanks, Ray and ES.

I pulled the plant up out of the pot a bit which got the plant higher and got the good root out of the reservoir. Those are the only pots that I have right now, so it'll have to do for the time being. I need to find a wider and possibly slightly shorter pot (shorter to make the missus happy so the S/H pot is lower in the decorative pot). I'm not expecting to find anything like that, but I'll be looking.

[fishmom]

I can find plastic containers of various sizes and shapes at the Dollar Store (or your equivalent) and drill my own holes, as you did. Juice containers are another source, from the grocery store.