I think someone wants a bigger pot

[Skycat]

or maybe a mount



it's probably a sign when roots start hooking under the saucer

[bethmarie]

I've got several Phals with more roots out of the pot than in. Some of them like it better that way. The current pot size looks about right to me.

[Skycat]

Aw dang, I already repotted it like right after I posted.

I know it's normal for Phals to have roots outside the pot, and I actually did quite like it with the ridiculous spider-roots, but I dunno, I guess I was a little nervous about it getting unruly. This is the only one of my Phals that's been doing this.

[astrid]

Originally Posted by Skycat

Aw dang, I already repotted it like right after I posted.

I know it's normal for Phals to have roots outside the pot, and I actually did quite like it with the ridiculous spider-roots, but I dunno, I guess I was a little nervous about it getting unruly. This is the only one of my Phals that's been doing this.

I made this mistake with a phal recently. I've been nursing it to health for a year now, after nearly killing it at the start of my orchid love affair, haha!

Anyway, the phal had so so many roots that I thought I should repot it, and I put it from a plastic water bottle to a plastic solo cup. I left it there for a month, but its new leaf stopped growing and I finally checked the roots and HALF THE NEW ONES ROTTED OFF!!

Arghh!! I was so mad, and I put it back in its old pot, after apologizing profusely to it.

I suggest you keep a very very close eye on the repotted phals roots because they may not like a bigger pot - the bigger pot provides more room for excess moisture to hang around.

[Ray]

I speculate that aerial roots are a phalaenopsis' efforts to better shore itself up.

Structurally, that's a lot of big, floppy vegetation on top of a rather narrow base. In nature, in a breeze, those leaves are veritable "sails" that can snap it right off of the root system.

Aerial roots, emanating from higher up in the plants' structure, act as "guy wires" to stabilize it,

As an experiment, I put phals in semi-hydro pots that are the same diameter as the leaf span of the plant. The plants put their aerial roots down into the medium near the perimeter of the pots, and produce no more. (Don't try that with traditional culture musing other media, there will be soppy regions in the middle of the root mass that will suffocate the roots.)


Ray Barkalow
firstrays.com