About my Paph. Supersuk "Eureka" AM/AOS x Paph Raisin Pie "Hsinying") x Sib

[silken]

Good luck with your Paph!

[Jeffery]

I am learning real fast not to like sphag at all, so far over watering is been my biggest enemy anf its mostly due to the fact that compacted sphag just stays overly wet for to long, I been trying a mixture of small amounts of sphag around the roots then bigger woodchips around that for better circulation

over-potted? is there a general rule of thumb to use in choosing the right pot, cus I just changed mine last week to a bigger pot.

[silken]

Jeffrey, yours could be over-potted. Most orchids like to be pot-bound. Usually you should plant them into a pot just large enough to hold their roots and a bit of room for the next year's new growths. If the new growths are all coming from one side, then you can place the back old pseudobulbs up against the edge of the pot and leave a bit of room where the new pseudobulbs will grow. If the pot is too large, it won't dry our fast enough and it is too easy to over water and cause root rot. Hope that helps. The clay pot will help it dry out a bit faster.

[Jeffery]

My goodness! the pot it was in probably was the right size, maybe not! it was in a 2 inch pot, i'll try a 3 inch pot.

[silken]

Quite often you can re-pot back into the same pot, just changing to new potting material if the old has broken down. For Phals this is almost always the case! A 3 inch sounds reasonable if it came out of a 2 inch pot.

[JDEH]

Get your Paph out of all that moss for one. Re pot it with a bark, charcoal, peri lite and moss mixed really well.

It should come around. It likes to be moist, not soggy. In nothing but spag, moss it will stay soggy.

[DweamGoiL]

For Paphs, they do like to be potbound mostly. Also, it's generally not a good idea to leave the roots exposed like that. It's ok for Phals, but not too much for Paphs. I grow Paphs mainly and mine are all in bark, clay, about 30% sphag, and perlite packed loosely. For some plants, depending on the size of the plant, I use packing peanuts at the bottom of the pot. Basically, anything I can do to provide maximum aeration to the root mass, but keep it moist.

Paph roots don't grow as fast as Phals so it's important to pick the right size pot for them. They also like for their media to be changed yearly. Now, I may be wrong, but from the pictures, there are a lot of brown indentations on your plant. Is it suffering from some type of infestation? If that is the case, you'll want to deal with that immediately so the plant has a better chance to recover. It has already been stressed by the culture. Paphs don't do things fast. Once they start to do downhill, it will take a good deal of time for them to perk back up.

ETA - I hadn't noticed this is a really old thread that was resurrected, but my advice still applies to Paphs.

[Optimist]

Originally Posted by Jeffery

My goodness! the pot it was in probably was the right size, maybe not! it was in a 2 inch pot, i'll try a 3 inch pot.

Putting rocks or pot sherds (broken pieces of pot) in the larger pot naturally create a smaller pot. They are also great for drainage.