advice please...

[SamIAm]

hi everyone...i am looking for a bit of advice. i bought a mini phal online, it arrived last friday. there was a note to water the following day, which i did. the phal is potted in moss and has not been watered since last saturday morning. it is planted in a clear standard orchid pot. so today, i was looking at it and what do i see, a black root ...i went out and bought orchid pots for all of my orchids, which now totals 7 (no idea how that happened) ...i have bark soaking, but before i do anything, should i contact the company?...should they be responsible?...is it possible for this to be from my care in less than a week?...thank you for any help...

[E-Jag]

Hey, SamYouAre,
Pull the phal out of the pot and check the roots. If most of the roots are black/brown and soft/mushy, get in touch with the seller. Otherwise, remove all the sphag and put the plant back in the same pot (cleaned, of course - bleach will work) with new bark which has soaked for maybe 12-24 hours. No matter what, trim off dead roots and dip root system in hydrogen peroxide for a few minutes. Good luck and welcome to the forum. You will find an absolute wealth of information here.

[digitalgate]

If there is any green roots then the plant is good. Make sure they are firm not soft and mush. If the root is good then you have nothing to worry about. But you have the difficult task of controlled watering. Try the skewer method of watering.

[mehitabel]

Most vendors won't take responsibility for a plant unless you notify them right away that it was not in good condition when it arrived, within a day or two at most. They are responsible for a good plant that arrived in good condition. After that, they can't take responsibility because they can't control the care it gets.

You've gotten good advice from the previous posters on how to take care of your plant. Good luck with it.

[orchidlover55]

I wanted to say to the forum and we love pics so when you get time send us some pics of your orchids I agree with the rest E-Jag, Mehitabel and digitalgate , if most of roots are good clean it up and put it in a clean pot. If most of them are bad then call the seller. Good Luck

[solay]

Hi and welcome. Hopefully the plant will bounce back and thrive. I have a hard time with Phals. I got recently too. Rot can happen pretty fast so hopefully if you do contact the seller, they will give you the benefit of the doubt. Good luck.

[Azure]

Welcome! Phals are a pretty tough bunch... I'm currently bringing back one that had 0 roots, and now has about 5 started and is growing a new leaf! Not to say that this will happen to yours of course. Also, a couple of mushy roots, while not great, isn't much of a problem as long as there are lots of nice green firm ones. Everyone else has marvelous advice! And believe me..... you won't stop at seven...mwahahahaha

[SamIAm]

thank you all for your input...i took the phal out of it's pot and there wasn't too many bad roots ...the worst was one very long root that was bad in increments, which is now gone, also another smaller root, but i was happy to see the rest in good condition. i have no idea how long it was in the tiny pot it was in, but those roots weren't going back into that pot so it now resides in a 4 inch orchid pot.

Thanks for the welcome and i agree, this is a great site

Azure, all i can say to your comment that i won't stop at 7 is
cause you're right...