I love catts and they are very easy to care but after I got one plant yesterday I have some questions...
I had one telephone call yesterday. One man called me to say that one Cattleya is waiting for me in another town. I went there immediately and returned with one large Catt in bag. When I got It out of the bag I saw that the plant had two old growths out of the pot wit the mass of roots outside. And on the other side of the pot there was another old growth outside of the edge. The plant was very neglected. The potting material was totally decomposed and the plant had around 11 old, mature pseudobulbs and no new growths. I know that Catts should be repoted when the new growth starts but I couldn't wait for that to occur for the mix was decayed and there was great danger of root rot.
So I decided to transplant the whole thing. When I got it out from the pot there was large mass of roots inside. Some were rotten but major part was ok. I saw mushroom (yes, mushroom) growing from the potting mix. I had to damage some live roots in order to remove every piece of old bark. I saw that rhizome was dried in the middle (where the smallest and oldest pseudobulbs were) and the plant cracked in two pieces. I got two divisons, one with 4 old pbulbs and other with 7 of them... I had big problems when putting them in new pots. Distance between growths is big and the rhizome is too long. So when I found the pot which had enough space for 2-3 new growths to grow I realised that it was too deep and too large. The plant would be overpotted in that pot. So i found some shallow and wide container, and I was nervous so I just placed the plant inside and pressed tightly the root ball, I felt the roots cracking... I added bark and pressed firmly. Grr, they are so hard to repot. And even now, there is space for only one new growth... Roots are cracked, plant has no new growts, everything sounds wrong... I think that that will set the plant back but I hope that 7 old pbulbs will do their job with storing nutritiens and water. Will this aggressive intervention set the plant back or it will encourage new growth?
How do you resolve that potting problem? I thought about putting some piece of plastic or wood on the edge of the pot so that new growth can't go outside? This sounds stupid but I'm just trying to find the way to keep the plant inside the pot... I can't find the pot that is wide enough and not too deep.
Excuse me for so long post and bad English...
