repotting questions and photos :)

[Evangeline Bourne]

Hey guys, my husband and I got 2 new orchids today. We think they are vandas but we still arent great at telling them apart.

One we got today seems very root bound and we want to re-pot it, but arent entirely sure on the best way to get the roots off the plastic pot.

any suggestions?

Also... the leaves dont look so great... a couple have black spots and while they are all nice and firm some have a slightly yellowish tinge to them.









Thanks guys.
And... can any of you identify it?

[kmarch]

Evangeline,

You orchid is a dendrobium, not a vanda. Dendrobiums like to be tightly pot bound so normally I would not recommend a repot but in your case I see it is starting to grow over the edge of the old pot so a repot is probably in order after the plant has finished blooming. When you repot, choose the smallest pot which can comfortably accomodate the roots. I'd use a basic bark mix: bark, perilite, charcoal.

When you unpot the orchid, feel and look at the roots. Remove any that are mushy, grey or black, they're rotten. Leave any that are crisp and whitish, greenish or creamish colour. Looking at the canes (stems), note that they are shriveled and at the leaves, it looks like your plant has suffered some stress. I suspect when you repot you may find many of the roots rotted/lost. This is commonly caused by overwatering so go to the AOS website AOS | Home and get the dendrobium culture sheet the have there. It will give you useful care instructions.

[Evangeline Bourne]

Wow. Thanks for the info. Much appreciated.
Do you think we should lay off watering it for a while to try and reduce any damage/rot to the roots?

[kmarch]

I dont' know how often you're watering or what conditions you have (temperature, humidity, light all have an impact on how fast a plant dries out between waterings) so I can't say for sure that you should cut down or not. You may be watering just right. Normally I would say err on the dry side but the plant already looks dehydrated/stressed to me.

Barbados is kind of warm and humid, right? Or is it hot and dry?

[Evangeline Bourne]

this site should give you a fair idea. although its pretty warm and humid most of the year. the 'cold' part of the year (which we are just leaving now) averages 24 of a night 27-28 of a day. the hot time of year (which is most of it) is 26-27 of a night and 32 of a day. today humidity is 83% and it stays pretty humid all year.
our plants get morning sun then bright light but no direct sunlight from about 12pm onward. they seem to like it.
we flood them once a week, and the ones we got that were healthy or at least not kept too damp so the roots rotted tend to be happy with that.

Barbados Climate, Temperature, Rainfall, Humidity

[kmarch]

Ok, good, that's helpful. So if you are watering this orchid once a week now, you could probably cut back a little until it gets repotted and you can treat it just like all of your other orchids.

The unknown here is what's going on inside that pot. I bet you could pop the whole root ball out in one solid piece and take a look. It looks pretty compacted at the surface so I bet you could do it without much effort or drama. If it's all soggy and drenched on the inside that would indicate that you oculd perhaps cut down on the watering until you get it repotted. If it seems dry enough you could probably treat it like all of your other orchids even now. You may even find that the roots are better than I suspect.

[Evangeline Bourne]

ok... we took it out of the pot and all I have to say is WOW. there are a LOT of roots. they dont look rotten from what I can see but we didnt open them up to see where the potting medium was (couldnt see it for all the roots LOL) we also found the name tag in there, apparently its called D Midnight # 2...

[kmarch]

Yes most fo the roots look pretty good to me too. Are tye crisp and firm? If so you can probably water it just like your other Dendrobiums.

[Evangeline Bourne]

yay!
Yes most of them seem good to me. like I said we didnt open it up to check the inside, but the ones we could see looked good and felt nice.
what do you recomend when we do the repotting? losen the roots and get rid of the old potting material? I would like to use the clay like beady things because they seem to let a good ammount of air circulate around the roots and hold water without keeping the roots wet. good plan? bad plan? any advice would be very much appreciated.
Thanks so much for your help so far
going to bed now so we wont reply till morning.
Thanks again
Ang and Sean

[Sean Bourne]

Hey guys, any ideas on how to get the potting medium out from between those roots?

[brookn]

Soaking them sometimes for a long time to soften and loosen them is the best way. Gently raking your fingers through the roots works once they have been soaked sometimes. And sometimes you just gotta leave it, cause it's not coming out. Oh and my favorite tweezers.

[Evangeline Bourne]

how long is a long time?

[brookn]

Sometimes an hour or more. I have soaked up to3 hours and I know members who have soaked even longer.

[Evangeline Bourne]

thanks
Also, does your kitty try and eat your orchids?

[brookn]

No, Fatboy eats everything that is catfood related, and will have dessert at the neighbors . They go outside to play, and they eat grass when they need something green, but I live in a very cat friendly area, and the neighborhood cats roam around. Almost all the cats in my area are spayed or neutered also. We all have feeders ouside, and everyone eats where ever they want basically-sometimes we get a kitty fight that's it. Spray bottles with water work, but I trained my kitties to a hissing sound I make, from when they were kittens. They stay out of the orchids with the exception of knocking them over trying to get into the window, so I have moved the orchids back a bit so that does not happen.

[Evangeline Bourne]

my kitty doesnt eat the orchids as they are outside and shes inside, but shes trying to eat my daisies. strange critters

[Evangeline Bourne]

sorry that was completely not orchid related :P