Hey there! I'm an orchid noob who is curious how drastic I should be with taking care of these new plants of mine. Let's be honest, the reason I have these two particular plants is because they were cheap and I really wanted to see if they could survive the horrible lighting in my room along with some other species, haha. I hope they do! Also, yes both have hard water spots on the leaves, near as I can tell -- the town I'm in has super hard water. When I swing by the store next I'll be picking up a jug of purified/distilled. Both of my phals were abused in the store -- they're both flowering too, but all the flowers look fine.
The little one was apparently yanked out of a larger arrangement and hidden in the back row, so who knows what it went through -- despite that, it's in the best shape of the two, near as I can tell. It appears to have some surface scarring and some slight browning on the tips of the leaves. There's a tiny bit of black on the edge of some of the scars. Does that mean they should be excised? Should I just keep an eye on them?
The big one was rescued from a hardware store and was stuck in a tiny tiny pot that it had somehow been squished out of like someone squeezed the bottom of the liner. The roots had more of a dehydration issue than anything, but a good deal of them seemed okay -- I guess it's hard for things to rot if they're spending 80% of their time in the air. I did an emergency repot on it because it didn't seem like it was at all inhabiting its old one, so we'll see what happens -- no big deal if the blooms drop early. It was in one of those like.. plastic sleeve things for bouquets as well so its leaves were all bent upwards, leaving it hard to diagnose while in the store. It does have brown spots , a yellow bottom leaf (age?), and other imperfections including what seems to be a scrape on one top leaf and some wrinkling near where it was bent upward pretty strongly. The brown spots don't really seem squishy like in some descriptions -- but should it be cut out? I'm tempted to remove the yellow leaf as well -- can it just be snipped off close to the base and the wound hit with a bit of cinnamon like is done for roots? Again, should this all just be "stuff to keep an eye on" or remove ASAP?
My main question is what's the theory for cutting out bad spots like that? For ones near the edge do you basically just take a "bite" out of the side of the leaf? What about near the center? Do you worry about cutting through the middle vein of the leaf? Does cinnamon work well on the cut edges, or what's the best (cheap, recent grad here) option? Do I need to become a plant surgeon?!
Thanks for any help!
Phals with brown spots & their removal
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