Oncidium care

[Nicolasdperez]

I recently received an oncidium from my grandma and am trying to revive it. It has active growth (two new spikes and about 3 healthy bulbs) but also has about 6 completely dead bulbs. Is it fine to cut the dead bulbs and roots off now? I have done this before I am just not sure if now is the time. Thank you for your help.

[Roberta]

Photo? How bad is the medium?

[Nicolasdperez]

I cannot tell how the medium is as the pot is not clear. However, I do know that she has had it for at least two years and that she has not reported it.

[Roberta]

Can you tell what the medium might be? The plant looks fine, and Oncidiums (also intergenerics like this) need to stay on the damp side. If it is putting out spikes, I'd be inclined to wait until it finishes blooming to disturb it (assuming that you want to see the flowers... they're beautiful and worth waiting for) Also, the new growth tends to start about the time of blooming or after. Ideally you'd want to wait for new growth.

Since the state of the medium is unknown, you can get a sense of how well drained it is by weighing after watering - see how fast it dries out. If it isn't ready for watering in a week or 10 days, you'd want to re-evaluate. Even if you decide that you need to repot before it blooms, think long and hard about what you might want to cut - or not.

[Nicolasdperez]

I just repotted because I saw the new growth was rotting and felt that all the bulbs were squishy. First, I cut all of the dead rhizomes off. Then, I tried to salvage as many roots as possible from the root rot and sprayed the roots with hydrogen peroxide. Also, since my medium is pre soaked, I decided to just let the orchid dry out in a clear insert pot for now. I think that will help the rot and let the rhizome callus. But is there anything else I can do to help revive it? I plan on putting it in a mix of charcoal and bark in a couple of days. Thank you for your help.

[Roberta]

Personally, I haven't used peroxide on an orchid in my whole orchid-growing life. If there aren't new good roots it probably can't hurt, but it attacks living tissue that has a lot of surface area (like root hairs) I just rinse the crud off the roots, pot in fresh medium (which is drier and has more air, an unfriendly environment for rots) and let it grow.