help needed with "rescue plants"

[kavanaru]

Hi all,

I recently bought some plants in a public sale (the one where you can buy items from people who died and had no family to take over the stuff, or people who went bankruptcy) I bought a couple of orchids (for about 10$ all of them together) that have been receiving not enough water for a long period:

a) 3 Catt type which are urgently needing to be repotted, but are in more or less good conditions.

b) 2 Cattleyas (mosiae and loddigesii) which are obviously strongly dehydrated. C. loddigessi has new shoots and is startingto produce new roots. C. mosiae has only 3 PB and roots at all...

c) 1 Psychopsis Kalihi, very dehydrated, but producing new roots and new leaves too.

my questions/concerns:

a) this group is fine, they only need to be repotted. I will just wait a bit until they start rooting again. Is this a right approach?

b) What do you recommend in order to rescue this plants? This is the biggest challenge, and I would like to be able to say in a couple of years: these ones were almost dead and now they are flowering

c) Should I proceed as with group a)?

furthermore, once the leaves are strongly dehydrated, will they ever recover and look healthy again?

[Magnus A]

Hi Ramón

I support your suggestion for a). for b) I would say that new roots is very promising, repot the loddigessi, the mossiae is difficult, how bad is it? I myself would have put it on moist spagnum (NOT wet!) and hoped for the best. c) Not familiar with this one but for me new roots always allow for repotting...

/Magnus

[Lorraine]

Hi Ramon,

You mentioned that the group is dehydrated. I would suggest that you gradually increase their watering so as to not shock them too much. Maybe take them out of their pots now and loosely add potting mix putting them in a basket so you can monitor the roots and mist them really well as soon as they are dry. It may take awhile for them to look really happy but they should . I mounted a catt earlier this year after repotting and almost losing it. It is mounted on a piece of driftwood with spag. moss, where I live it dries our pretty quick so it gets watered more often. Bottom line is it took sometime but there are new leaves and it is much happier than in the pot.

Not sure about the Psychopsis Kalihi. Maybe someone else here at OB has some advice.

Take care of those newbies and they may suprise you sooner than you think.

Lorraine

[chulaorchids]

Hi Ramon,

I would repot immediately. Get rid of any bugs, or conaminates BEFORE putting them with any of your other plants. In that kind of shape they are obviously neglected, who knows what lurks in the bottom of those pots, lol.

Unpot, clean, sanitize, and let them lay and dry out for a day or two before repotting. Bagging in a big plastic bag with a bit of moisture, like a tablespoon only, will help to get them started again. Leave a small crack open, maybe an inch at the top.

[Deborah]

Hi Ramone, I am new to growing orchids but, I jumped right in and took a lot of risks, I bought a lot of bareroot cattleya divisions,so that I could get blooming size plants cheaper, and have found that the cattleya types are really tough, they can start with no roots at all and in a few months be growing and possibly spiking as if nothing happened.A few that I recieved had dehydrated leaves, I put one in bark and watered more frequently than normal. then one in moss , and found that the one in moss has fared much better,but the one in bark is doing ok too ,it just not bouncing back as quickly. hope this helps.

[Brooke]

If the catt leaves have been dehydrated for quite a while, they won't plump back up and look nice. They will live and feed the plant, just not be pretty.

The mossiae I would put in a small amount of damp sphag and clay pot, bright light but no direct sun and wait. It will eventually grow roots - pot then. Right now, mossiae is in it's dry season. The others if new roots are forming, repotting into your choice of media would be best.

The leaves on your Psychopsis get very hard/brittle with age - that is normal. They don't like to have their roots disturbed but if you have new roots growing and new growth, now is the best time to disturb it.

Good luck it sounds like you have some good ones. I love loddegesii and mossiae!

Brooke

[nancy]

Hi Ramon -
When I get bare root plants I get good results with a soak (overnight) containing (approximately): to 1 gallon lukewarm water, add 1/4 to 1 cup sugar, a tablespoon of seaweed extract, a dash of superthrive (or other B-vitamin transplant liquid) plus a few vitamin E capsules squeezed in.
Instead of repotting, I would be tempted to then put each plant into a shallow pot and mist occasionally with a weak solution of sugar water and seaweed. Then when you see roots of good length, pot them up. Without good roots, the plants are in danger of rotting, even if they are severely dehydrated.
If you can get them growing, you got a really good deal!
Regards - Nancy