To Moss or Not to Moss…?
 

Hi, all - I’ve been gifted my 3rd Phal by friends and I’m in the process of planning repotting, etc etc..

This particular one has 3/4 to a full inch of moss growing along the surface and, naturally, it’s VERY damp as a result.

I’ve never had to deal with this with my other orchids, so I don’t know what to do. Should I remove this layer when I change over to the new potting medium? It’s so thick that it appears to be inhibiting the growth of air roots, but that could be my imagination. I expect to completely clear the roots with chopsticks when I repot, so I assumed I would remove this top layer as well, but I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing.

Pictures attached. The very well-meaning friends moved it from the original plastic pot to a traditional ceramic pot for presentation purposes. It’s too big and doesn’t afford any airflow - issues that will be solved in the next few days when the new pot delivers.

Thanks!

You can take it off if you wish. Watering in sphagnum is different from watering in bark. Both work well with proper care.

Especially if you want to leave it in that pot, moss is going to tend to stay much too wet. If you use bark, and water so that it flows through the medium, you'll pull air into the root zone, and the little bit of water in that "dish" at the bottom won't keep things too wet. Moss is tricky to get right - too much water and it gets soggy crowding out the air. Too dry (crispy) and it becomes rather hydrophobic, really hard to rewet. If lightly damp throughout, it can give the "humid air" around the roots, the "Goldilocks" situation. Not easy to get perfect. Medium bark, it's hard to overwater, a lot easier to get it right.

The moss doesn't look like it's currently alive. Store-bought dried sphagnum moss can occasionally have little spots reactivate and start growing again, I've had it happen in closed propagation containers, but the living parts usually stay very small if they show up at all. Live sphagnum moss will be a bright green color. If it's tan/brown it's dead.

Just a personal observation from a very new grower, but today I felt it necessary to repot 5 orchids that I had potted in a mix of sphagnum and coarse orchiata bark. They were in both net basket pots and slotted orchid pots from rePotme. The airflow was about as good as you can get....I thought. When I got down to the nitty gritty, the medium was all wet and had been like that for a long time despite my efforts to keep my hands off the watering can. Almost all the roots had been compromised and I am back to square 1 with these beauties. I live in a climate where the humidity runs between 70% and 80% indoors. So all that to say, I will never do that sphagnum thing again. I am just not a good enough grower to read the signs of when to water. Just my 2 cents. Do with it what you will.
Kelly