Help - can I save this orchid?

[Alex R]

I'm not an expert. I repotted it about 4-5 years ago and it has been great, stemmed flowers many times. Recently it started dying and it's now accelerated. Leaves are flaccid, the new stem gave flowers but they are now flaccid too and some of the new bulbs dried out quickly and didn't grow at all.

Roots in the pot have turned pale. Many external roots are dry and the other are semi-dry with a pale green color. It also barely drinks any water if I water it (bowl stays full for >1 week).

I have some compost from 4-5 years ago.

I'm attaching some photos below.

Would be very grateful for advice on how to save it. It's one of the oldest orchids we have.

Should I just trim all the bad roots and repot it, putting in the green'ish external roots?

Many thanks in advance!

[SouthPark]

Hi there Alex. Just from a first visual assessment - by looking through the translucent pot. It appears that the roots are suffocating, or suffocated from too much water inside the pot. The water is most likely not moving much around or in the roots ----- and the root cells need oxygen to stay alive. If the water doesn't move much at all ----- then no oxygen. Roots die, and the plant then can't get water into it through the dead roots.

So the first thing to do is to remove that plant from the wet media. And allow for a dry out of the roots. You can even wash the roots in tap water - and remove any squishy mushy bits. Then dry those roots out. Then pot into a bark/perlite media ------ or at least don't allow the media to get soaking wet for relatively long periods of time.

Also - fortunately, there are some nice and alive long roots still on the plant. So at least some of them can be used for getting water into the orchid. So try to put some of those long ones into your new media too.

[Roberta]

Also a note... 4-5 years is really too long to go before repotting in most media. So as noted by SouthPark, roots in the pot have probably rotted. When you repot, you can work those better roots that are outside the pot, into the new medium , so that they can do better at taking up water. As the plant grows new roots, the dehydration problem will solve itself. (The rotted roots inside the pot can't take up water, so the plant is dehydrated even though water is available)

[Alex R]

@SouthPark, @Roberta - Awesome! Thanks so much for all the explanations and advice. I will get right to it.

I suspected drowning too. I think I overwatered it a while back when we were gone for too long. Also, the translucent pot has been in an opaque outer pot-shell that's too tight around it, so it's easy for water to stay at high levels around the translucent pot for long periods. I'll change this for a looser one so that the air gaps of the translucent pot can circulate air even when it's overwatered.

[aliceinwl]

In addition to an airier external pot, after watering check for accumulated water the following day and dump any excess water. Most Phalaenopsis grown on the cool side (low 70s degrees Fahrenheit) don’t like their roots to stay really wet for more than a day or two. If your orchid compost has a lot of fine sediments also consider a change to a coarser more open media.

With mine, I also take a soldering iron to the sides of plastic pots like this and melt a bunch of ventilation holes in the sides to facilitate air getting into the root zone. I’ve dealt with a few Phalaenopsis for friends in the same condition as yours for the same reason (soggy media and death of all in pot roots) and they made excellent recoveries.

[Alex R]

@aliceinwl - thanks! Great to hear they are robust and make recoveries. I'm much more confident after reading all the replies in here than I was before posting, so thank you everyone.

As I was saying above, I'm fairly what happened is what you explained, as I think I overwatered it before leaving home for a longer period a few months back. Usually I do check the next day and dump excess water from the external pot.

[Roberta]

It really should not be sitting in water at all... when you water, let water flow through the pot (like under the faucet in the sink is fine), then let it drain. Phalaenopsis plants don't want liquid water around their roots, what they want is "humid air" - so water well, then let dry for a few days before watering again. One way to get a feel for the rate of evaporation is to weigh the pot right after you water it (after it drains), then weigh each day following... when the rate of weight loss slows down, time to water again. A kitchen scale or postal scale works well for this.

[Alex R]

Hi all,

A late update (been swamped with work until now). It was worse than I imagined . Photos below.

The moment I tried to lift it from its stem, the whole thing came right off at the surface -- all the roots in the medium were practically already severed from the stem. All dead. The poor thing only had the aerial roots, leaves and also blooming flowers.

What I did on Sunday:

• Added a few more holes in the plastic pot so it gets more oxygen.
• Cut all bad and dry roots. There were very few roots left after that. You can see that in the 2nd photo (can try zoom). The roots that were left were already mushy/semi-flaccid/semi-dry, though still green-ish.
• Put it all in new medium, with all the previous external roots now inside the medium.
• Watered. First using a shower, letting it run for a while to go through it and drain, continuously, to make sure all the medium got fully damp. I then did one more watering with some orchid food drops in it.
• Placed in a new location with more daylight (but not direct sunlight).
• Ordered more medium (8L), pots, orchid food, orchid mist. Should all arrive tomorrow.

So far I notice:

• leaves are still flaccid, maybe a little more flaccid than on Sunday, but I can't tell very well
• same goes for flowers.
• during the first 2 days I noticed some roots through the transparent pot were still damp; there was water vapor between root and plastic as it usually happens
• the medium now seems dry, and can't see any more vapor around roots
• I didn't want to use a skewer to test because I was afraid I would hurt a root of which there are very few to begin with (not an expert)

Any recommendations at this stage? Should I water it again right now?

Photos:

[SouthPark]

This one does look like it has a chance to recover. One method is to spray lots of water out toward the rim of the pot - which still allows the media and roots inside to stay humid ------ and cuts down on soggy situations.

[Roberta]

Now, patience is the key. It looks like you have some good roots. Flowers won't revive. But leave the bare flower spike as long as it is green... the plant can "recycle" the tissue and moisture in that old spike, so treat it as a reserve. As for the leaves, they may rehydrate, but if so it will be sloooowww. But with good roots, fresh medium, and consistent care, it will produce new ones that are firm, in the meantime the limp ones are still photosynthesizing. A technique for figuring out how frequently to water is to water it well - let water run through the pot, then drain. When it stops dripping, weigh it on a kitchen scale or postal scale. Weigh it again on each subsequent day... when the rate of losing weight (due to water evaporation) levels off, it is time to water again. (No spritzing... water so that it runs out of the pot, which pulls air into the root zone) With the fresh medium, as the water evaporates air is pulled into the spaces, which is exactly what the plant needs. So again, patience... orchids don't do anything fast, progress is measured in weeks or months, so just keep up the good work.