Huge Set Back for Noid Phal
 

After this you all may want to revoke my orchid grower card... I'm so ashamed to say this but my no ID phal has taken a turn for the worst. While waiting on the spent spike to die back I noticed that the browning seem to accelerate over the last couple of days. Upon inspection I saw a gnat of some kind on the phal which led me to inspect it much closer where I noticed pitting on the underside of one of the leaves. Immediately I lifted it out of the decorative vase an looked at the roots... my heart started to sink. A couple of the roots that looked fine a week ago were either browning or had collapsed completely. I knew that I was dealing with root rot again.

I prepped the bark, made a new smaller pot out of a clear plastic solo cup, dug up the recipe for the cinnamon and dish soap recipe last night thinking I will re-pot today. I just took the phal out of the pot shook the bark off and felt a rock hit the bottom of my stomach. Almost all of the roots in the bark mix have rotted out with the exception of a couple. With that being said almost all of the "aerial" roots are intact, some have even gotten fatter and it looks like there has been some growth in the length of some.

Herein lies my questions.

How long should I soak the aerial roots to get them more pliable to anchor some into the medium?

I want to get some sort of root hormone to apply prior to re-pot however it will be Saturday before I can get to the store. If I wrap the roots in damp paper towels and occasionally mist can I leave the plant out of any medium for a little over a day?

I am thinking that this new makeshift pot is still too big, I don't have any packing peanuts however I do have some packaging Styrofoam from an item I purchased. Can I break this up into pieces and add to the pot when I re-pot?

Thanks sooo much for your help, if it wasn't for the fact that my newer phals in sphag are doing fine I would feel like a complete failure. :_(

Soak for 10 - 15 mins. They will not bend like limp noodles though, there will still be some rigidity to them.

You may want to use a modified water bottle if the pots you have are too large.

Styrofoam peanuts do help if there's still too much space in the pot.

Make sure drainage is good if you modify a water bottle.

I also recommend monitoring your Phals grown in full on moss carefully, I don't recommend being so complacent with this method of growing Phals in the long run. :twocents:

On the note of your other Phals in moss. Have you checked their roots?? That's usually where the root problems begin.

Okay sounds good. The cup I modified is about the same height, but the lip is 1/2" smaller, and the base is 1 1/2" smaller than the current pot. I added holes in the bottom and the sides for drainage.

I have been checking the roots and the overall appearance of the phals in sphag almost daily and checking bamboo skewers every 4-5 days as I'm nervous about this medium. The phals are also in two different environments which also causes me to keep an eye on them. :nod:

Thanks for your help!

Philip is right. I myself havent mastered the "skewer method" ...so I am not really comfortable with moss as a medium except for my Neos in classic Japanese potting...for my Phals: I use a mix of bark, coco chip, lava rock, charcoal and hydroton...a weekly watering is fine...I also have two Phals in S/H method and its just fine...

With these I have been using a combination of skewer and how much of the top layer or sphag is "crunchy", and what color the roots are to gauge when to water. Then I stick strictly to a less is more mentality, it's been so far so good with those.

So I figure I'll use sphag and bag to create an damp environment for the next 24 hours until I re-pot. New question, I have read about using heat/warmth to encourage root growth. Can this be achieved with a regular heating pad or will this get too hot for a phal?

"regular heating pad" for plants of for humans? If it's a plant one, it will be fine; for humans, probably way too hot.

There are far better methods to raise humidity than "Sphag and Bag", imo. The biggest problem with "sphag and bag" is that it really severely limits the amount of air circulation the plant gets. It is essentially a breeding ground for bacterial and/or fungal infections.

A salad bowl would work better than sphag and bag. A modified 2L soda bottle is better than sphag and bag. Numerous other ingenuities are better than sphag and bag in order to achieve higher humidity. Just sayin'.

You've got great advice from knowledgeable people here. I'll just add that in my (very dry) environment adding a thin layer of sphag on top of the medium and misting it daily works well. I found it encourages new root growth.
Good luck!

One thing I have learnt to never do and that is to force aerial roots into the mix. Aerial roots do a great job of absorbing moisture in a humid environment - what I have noticed is that pot root growth soon follows aerial roots in a "damaged" orchid. There must be some reason why your pot roots rotted, maybe wrong/extreme temps or too moist ? If you don't address this issue then you are doomed to a groundhog day with your pot roots.....