Re: Balden's Kaleidoscope Concern

[Ray]

It's hard to judge from photos only, but my "guessessmant" is that:

• the move from sphag to S/H should have been a plus, and nothing to be concerned about. If root transition was the issue, you'd have probably seen it sooner than 3 months after transplantation.
• The newest- and second to it leaves looks great, so the plant might merely be resorbing the old ones and moving on.

Just to be safe,

How often are you watering/feeding?

Are you flushing the pot at each instance by filling it to the top and letting it drain?

The plant may be warm from the light level, but is it in an extremely dry, air-conditioned environment? If so, you might be excessively chilling the roots via evaporative cooling.

[Pilot]

Originally Posted by Ray

It's hard to judge from photos only, but my "guessessmant" is that:

• the move from sphag to S/H should have been a plus, and nothing to be concerned about. If root transition was the issue, you'd have probably seen it sooner than 3 months after transplantation.
• The newest- and second to it leaves looks great, so the plant might merely be resorbing the old ones and moving on.

Just to be safe,

How often are you watering/feeding?

Are you flushing the pot at each instance by filling it to the top and letting it drain?

The plant may be warm from the light level, but is it in an extremely dry, air-conditioned environment? If so, you might be excessively chilling the roots via evaporative cooling.

Hi Ray--

I water at least once a week but lately, due to the heat, at least twice a week. When I water I'll fill the pot by holding the two holes closed to let it fill and will do that several times and then let it sit under the water while I get the next orchid that is to be watered. In all it gets flushed for probably five minutes of fresh water going through the entire time. I feed weekly on a low dose-- urea free.

Though it is warm here these days, we don't use air conditioning. We have it, just choose not to use it unless it gets really hot (today we have it on-- but it is sent to 78). So I don't think that is the issue.

In the meantime, I have drawn the wooden blinds and angled them a bit so that the sun isn't full strength on the entire plant all the time. Again, it gets about 2.5 hours of late morning sun every day.

I've noticed all my phals have some wrinkled leaves and as it is a common issue among them all, I do believe they dry out too fast. All of them are new (less than 2-3 months) to s/h and some have roots in the water, others do not, yet.

They are all now sitting on humidity trays as well.

Quick update on the phal, Balden's K.-- a second new leaf is peaking out. I decided to be sure there isn't something awful going on inside the pot and I unpotted it. What I found were loads of dead roots

It had probably 6-7 large roots before I planted it in s/h and they're all dead but replaced by new roots (about 4-5) that are growing into the medium but not as long. I think it is safe to say this is why the phal has looked so sad. Don't you think so?

Ray what do you recommend now? Should I water the phal more frequently in this case where the top hydroton goes dry fairly quickly, or let the roots naturally seek out the water? Again, it is quite dry here. Currently RH is 24%.

[Sandy4453]

Hi Pilot. I'm really glad to have read this thread. Interesting to me what you're up against with your Baldan's Kaleidoscope. I've got quite a few Kaleidoscopes, some peloric and this year, a local nursery near me had a huge inventory of them which I gladly purchased! (Baldan's nursery is here in Fla.) In all, I've got close to 90 Phals now and out of all of them, the Kaleidoscopes have shown the most stress, the least progress and overall, biggest declines. I lost 3 this summer...just died and I still can't figure out why. I attribute it to just bad, unhealthy over breeding/growing at the nurseries. I noticed that there were more peloric Kaleidoscopes than the others and while I love peloric, it's written that this can be caused by stress while growing, don't know for sure though.

I've also got a couple of other hybrids that lost more than just the typical 1-at-a-time bottom leaves, after a root clean up and re-pot once the blooms were spent....4 leaves in fact and those are doing very well in spite of the amount of leaf loss though, it's not typical to lose that many at once.

Don't keep mine in s/h like you. I use bark, spagh., c.h.c.

I've done a lot of wondering about these Kaleidoscopes and suspected that the ones that made it in mass quantities to the local nurseries (and went for $5) were not in as pristine, healthy condition as the ones that are sold to the better known stores or directly from the growers, perhaps?