Creatures in my pot!

[Woods]

Hello again,

This morning I was counting the new growths from my Cym (counted 4!) and to my horror saw something moving. It was a centipede - I took it out! I even think that there might be another one! The plant seems healthy to me... will the centipede have caused any damage?

The other thing I found (I have found a few of these) are tiny snail shells. I'm not sure if they were just in the compost mix. They don't seem to have snails inside them. They just crumble when touched - the one I found this morning didn't crumble though!

The question is should I treat it? I'm due to upsize the pot and am just sourcing what I need so could add a treatment product to my list.

Hopefully it's OK - as I said it looks healthy and has a number of new growths.

Any advice will be much appreciated.
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[Cynthia, Prescott, AZ]

If your Cymbidium is being grown in an open. chunky mix, like medium orchid bark, the snails could be bush snails living in the mix and eating root tips. Normally Cyms are grown in a semi-terrestrial mix with small bark added and a little very fine stuff. This would be a closed mix that does not allow bush snails (or centipedes) to enter, and hence, no damage from them. If you have bush snails in any of your orchids, you should do something to get rid of them. Try a search on snails to see what has be found effective. I don't use any kind of open mix, so don't have to deal with bush snails.

[Woods]

Thanks Cynthia,

I'll have a look on the web right now.

I'm going to upsize the pot for my cymbidium. So far I've only been able to find bags of general orchid compost mix in local garden centres. It has bark in it along with other things. Is that OK - would it be closed enough? I'm a bit suspicious about a standard orchid compost because there are so many different types of orchid.

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