Help me save this baby orchid please

[jtrmd]

I would grow it in just bark.

[tmoney]

hmmm, yes, we would be concerned with it as well, as with most of our seedlings that get sudden leaf yellowing it usually means the plant is on its way out. but, since the roots appear green and healthy then there is still a lot of hope.

agreed also that sphag may not be the best. however, giganteas and some hybrids of it seem to be particularly finicky with root disturbance. so my only caution is that if you have pulled it out and replanted it multiple times recently its probably a good time to take it easy on those roots. perhaps wait to repot again until you see it starting to push new roots. but if the roots are starting to die then waiting may not be an option.

indeed this is a tricky one! but with good roots you should be able to go forth with confidence, especially since we are coming into the growing season again. best of luck with bringing it back!

[Alvaro78]

Thanks a lot for all the help guys really! The debate right now is wether I should repot it to mostly only bark and remove most of the sphagnum or let it be for a while since the roots are green and healthy. I honestly don't know what to do because I don't want to disturbe de healthy roots but I'm scared that in this setup in the future I'll have problems with my roots so ye… I also have my other similar age orchids on this mix and they all seem fine

---------- Post added at 10:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:22 AM ----------

Originally Posted by rbarata

Perlite and sphagnum are water retentive. With that propotion (50 %) it might be suffocating the roots (they need humid air around them).
I would keep the perlite and reduce the sphagnum to 20%. I would also increase the bark size as it seems to be too small.
I don't know where you live in Spain but my summers have hot temps and day humidity often as low as 15%. I use only coarse bark or a mix of bark+LECA +Perlite or coco chips and the plants can handle it very well. The "secret" in this environment is to increase watering.

I see, as we have a similar climate in the summer how often do you usually have to water in that setup? My bark size is 15-20 mm. Thanks a lot

[Alvaro78]

Hello guys an update. I have made the wise decision (I think) of repotting it into almost full bark mix with some single bits of sphagnum. I did this will all my orchids (10 in total). I think it will help me in the long run because I realized when I was repotting that the bottom part of the pot was quite wet in a lot of the orchids I could squeeze the sphagnum and a reasonable amount of water came off

The good news is that all the roots of all my orchids looked healthy and none of them were rotting but want to take extra precautions. Now I'll not babysit them as much and just keep with my normal routine of watering when they dry out or almost dry out and fertilize weakly with about 70-100 ppm of N on each watering.

Thanks a lot for all the help once again <3

[estación seca]

The fact that the roots are healthy shows it's not a potting issue.

[Alvaro78]

Hello guys!

So this little orchid ended up dropping its yellowing leaf as predicted but it seems to have stabilized as it hasn't lost the other leaf it has and it has already been like 10 days since it lost the leaf.

I don't know what happened but I hope it will now start to grow slowly but surely and I am glad it is out of danger for now or so it seems. I attach some pics for you to see the state of it.