Several Phal care questions...

[Lavendula]

Hello all!

I got a new phal a short while ago, and I was going to repot it right away, but the blooms were so beautiful I didn't want to mess with it.
However, a couple days ago I noticed one of the blooms had weird brown sorta rotting spots on its petals. Upon further inspection I found a whack of mealy bugs and their eggs crowded around the base of the flower where the bloom meets the stem.

It took a few hours but I managed to pick all of them off, and every egg I could find (they were even up inside the flower, little bastards!) and then I q-tipped the whole plant with rubbing alcohol, misted the potting mix with it and dusted some cinnamon on top of the potting mix as well (it's a mix of fir bark and these little round thingies I assume are a sort of fertilizer). So far so good. No more pests yet.
Then today I decided to poke around in the potting mix to see if there were anymore pests and I saw this weird blue-green algae type of growth on some of the roots - particularly the roots that are up in the air/sticking out of the medium. Also some clover plants have popped up in the pot over the past few days.

So my questions are:

1. have I done enough to eradicate the pests? Any suggestions or tips on what I should do now, or should have done in the first place?

2. The stem and leaves are very healthy looking, and it has 1 very nice blossom, 1 terribly wilting blossom, and 1 bud still to open. Should I cut off the 1 wilted flower? The whole stem?

3. What do I do about the algae and clover? There doesn't seem to be any other sort of build-up of any kind... do I need to repot?

4. Do I need to cut off the pretty pretty blossoms if I am going to repot?

Any and all help is appreciated!

[edwardwang]

My suggestions as below,

1.Keep killing the bugs and eggs for a coup of days.
The more drastic measure is pull it out from the pot, at the same time, clean the pot as you can(if you want to re-use it), this way can clean the phal and pot thoroughly. But be carful when you pull it out.
After that just keep the moisture before you repot it.

2.Cut off the unwealth flowers when it happen, and when the spike become dry.Do not do it activly, just wait the situation change.
3.Too much algea and clover means the stuff is unfresh, it is time to repot and chang the stuff.Do not fertilize when you just finish repot.

Happy with your phal!

[edwardwang]

4.Answer is the same as above.

Happy with your phal!

[Lavendula]

awesomeness - thanks for the help!

[camille1585]

I agree you should probably repot now, even though there are blooms. The medium must not be in very good shape. A few people on OB repot everything as soon as they get it, blooms or not. Apparently it rarely affects the blooms.

As for the wilted flowers, they will fall off themselves. And keep an eye on the mealie situation. There will probably be eggs left somewhere. I got rid of mealies on an orchid only with alcohol and patience. Everyday I would inspect it and remove mealies as well as dab alcohol isn't the crevices between leaves. You should see them mainly on the flowers, that's were they love to be!

[Lavendula]

both flowers dropped off, and the stem is looking slightly dried out, but I'm repotting tonight, so fingers crossed... No more pests yet, but I'll give it a super going-over before I put it in it's new pot, just in case.

[edwardwang]

Originally Posted by Lavendula

both flowers dropped off, and the stem is looking slightly dried out, but I'm repotting tonight, so fingers crossed... No more pests yet, but I'll give it a super going-over before I put it in it's new pot, just in case.