My cattleya that I just repotted was also very root-bound, looking very similar to Tom's root-bound cattleya, pictured above. Mine was potted originally in a rocky, lava rock-type mixture and I was re-potting to a bark medium.
My first question is the same as Tom's -- should I have simply placed it in a larger pot and filled the space in around it with bark? In Tom's case, it look like his was already in bark and I assume he was re-potting in bark. Mine would have been bark on the outside with rock on the inside.
I did not think it would have been a good idea to have two different types of media with different water-retention, water-flow, & air-flow characteristics. So I attempted to tease away a lot of the small lava rocks buried inside the root-ball -- but I left quite a few rocks up there. I damaged some roots as I tried to open up the rootball, but for the most part all the roots looked okay when I was done. Then I tried to stuff a lot of bark up inside this cavity where the rock was prior to placing in the new pot. I am sure it is not nearly as tightly packed up in there as that lava rock was.
In Tom's case, bark-to-bark ... leave the bounded roots untouched upon re-potting or try to remove a lot of the encased medium which eventually would breakdown further?
In my case, rock-to-bark ... would you do the same as what I did, or would you have approached it differently? Thanks.
