Repotting Coelogyne

[Saiva]

Some clones are more tolerant to repotting than others! Mine is quite grumpy, the person I bought the bulbs from told me that if I repotted it, it will refuse to flower for about two years!

The advice I got was to repot the plant and let it stay in the container even when it grew over the edge! It's possible to plant it in a bigger container if the container has got holes on the sides! Like a basket that physalis comes in - but bigger of course! If the holes are so big the pieces of bark falls out - put a small net on the oinside of the container! Then the plant can sit there for years.

Oh, and the pots/containers should be low and wide so the bulbs can spread out but still keep the size of the pot reasonably low.

[bboibreks]

Sorry to join the party so late. I grow these outdoors with very little direct light outside in San Francisco. They grow like weeds for me. I divide them when the clumps start to get overcrowded and there are more backbulbs that leafed bulbs. At that point I break them up to single or double lead divisions with a few backbulbs. They generally recover to bloom that year. I've repotted and divided in the middle of winter without too much harm. The single lead plants with 2 backbulbs generally turn to 4 leads the following spring as each backbulb will send up a growth or 2. These grow fairly cold for me. They love water. I repot and divide them every 2 years and I try to put in much bigger pots since they are always pushing out new growth. It hasn't been unusual to get at least 2 flushes of new growth a year, sometimes 3. I grow them with my masdevallias but a bit more light.

[WeirdGuySeattle]

Yikes, I don't like this thread. I just divided my coelogyne (barbatum I think - I'd have to check the tag...) I hope it survives, but it was becoming unwieldy - its not my favorite, but it certainly looks cool when it blooms.

Mine had three long runners all growing out of the old pot by at least 2 inches on each new lead. I decided it needed to get a new pot and divided to three plants.

I clopped off a bunch of old roots attached to the oldest backbulbs. Now I have three plants - all look okay so far. But its only been 2 weeks. All of them had a new growth started when I started this process, they don't seem to be dying, but aren't really noticeably growing either.

If I had to do this with a little forethought - I might just let a plant crawl into a new pot. This particular one I was thinking of mounting, but ultimately after some research decided against it...

Shoot - I hope mine survives. I didn't really think about it, just decided it was time to go for it and live with the consequences.