depth of planting and crown rot

[JerseyGirlBecky]

I am a newbie here but seems that with the phals at least, there seems to be a big problem with the crown rot.
Now, I'm thinking, could it be prevented partly by not planting the orchid too deep in the potting media?
I try to be very careful watering, but notice that one always gets water in the lower leaves. Soooo, I raised the plant and left a few of the upper roots partly exposed and am not having that problem anymore.
I should say it was easy to do as I had just repotted it not long ago.

Becky

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

This is how a Phal grows in the wild:

Video: Phalaenopsis in situ | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Think out of the box, and you'll know what I'm getting at.

[JerseyGirlBecky]

I would love to do that.
but hanging them is not an option as I have to keep them in the house and even if I could rig something up, how would I water them?

[Zoi2]

Your potting media should not go any further up the plant than where the roots attach. It sounds like you did the right thing by lifting it up a ways. When you water, just watch for water drips and dry it off with a paper towel or kleenex.
Joann

[JerseyGirlBecky]

Thanks Joann, I do that. Even use a q-tip to get any water on the leaves close to the crown.
Becky

[tucker85]

You can water from the bottom also. Just sit the pot in a pan of water and let the water wick up through the medium. I often do that for phals indoors. Most of mine are outdoors and I water very early in the morning so they dry before the end of the day.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by JerseyGirlBecky

I would love to do that.
but hanging them is not an option as I have to keep them in the house and even if I could rig something up, how would I water them?

I didn't specifically say for you to mount them. Although, if you ever chose to, that's not impossible either. I live in a house and some of the orchids are in the house, and mounted. Not much is out of the range of possibility, you just gotta figure it out and want it bad enough. While I understand why you would think that it isn't a feasible thing to do (in terms of mounting a Phalaenopsis in the house), this has been a "limitation" that I have been able to bypass with relatively minimal effort. I view it as an inconvenience rather than a "limitation".

Not to mention, Los Angeles County is no steaming tropical jungle either, it was originally a semi-arid desert, so it isn't a very humid place.

The link to the video of Phalaenopsis in situ was to dispel whatever misconceptions you possibly may have had concerning the natural growth habit of Phalaenopsis, or to bring to light what may not have been known about their natural growth habits.

I speak from experience when I say that I used to not know how deep to pot an orchid in the pot, or why crown rot occurred either. I also used to believe they grew upright (like Vandas), when they really grew perpendicular or pendulously off of trees.

I highly recommend using the OB search engine and finding some posts about Phalaenopsis. There are so many of them, it's like a freshly discovered gold mine.


*** Hint to my original message: Form follows function. Have you considered asking yourself why the Phalaenopsis grows the way it does?

[silken]

This discussion leads me to ask basically the same question (how deep) but about cattleyas and other orchids with pseudobulbs. I had read that the rhizomes should sit just on top of the media not underneath. And when I repot, that's what I do. But then I find the next new growth quite often coming out higher on the rhizome than the old one and then it sits up above the media. The catts do that often.

I just received 7 new plants. One of the miltoniopsis I got was re-potted in July by the supplier and the bulbs sit nestled in moss. So far they haven't died of rot. A new cattleya has the entire rhizome buried and the pseudobulbs just showing so it seems contrary to what I read about leaving the rhizome above ground.

What do the really successful growers on this forum do???

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

"Silken", have you considered that a tree does not have the same evenness as the surface of a pot?

Think about how a tree's trunk and branches has many bumps and twists. Some tree trunks and tree branches can sprawl every which way.

Think about how an orchid climbs a tree.

Your Cattleya will not behave in a way where it grows nice and neat over a horizontal plane in a pot over a long period of time, because it never was meant to grow that way.

Cattleyas sprawl all over the surface of a tree.

The rhizomes are not buried in anything, they may be covered to some extent or another, but they're not buried. There are times when the roots are either covered in some patches of moss, lichen, forest debris, other epiphytes, or just hanging onto a bare piece of tree trunk or tree branch. At times the roots find their way into the crevices of the tree trunk or branch itself, or between the crevices of the bark on the trunk or branch.

My Laelia superbiens when potted does tend to sprawl on top of itself. In other words, some pseudobulbs will grow on top of the rhizome connected to another pseudobulb.

Scroll down the linked page and you'll see how Cattleyas grow on trees.

All about Ecuador -

Laelia superbiens in situ:

DSC00872 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Cattleya intermedia in situ:

Cattleya intermedia - in situ - 2 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!


When you are observing that the Cattleyas in your collection have a tendency to have some of the new growths grow a little higher than the previous pseudobulb in cultivation, the conclusions one may have about the growth habits of Cattleyas based on observations done on plants in cultivation is a bit out of context compared to how it's growing in the wild.


** What I just said sounds like a mind bender, which it kind of is.

I'm going to describe this as a "logic puzzle".

[silken]

Thanks King of orchid growing for the insight! But your last comment about growth habits in cultivation not being in context to growing in the wild is where my quandry lies. I've had some problem with root rot and bulb rot in the past, so depth of these things is a major consideration for me. If we were able to give them the exact conditions they have in the wild, none of them would be potted, and many of them would be strapped to an old tree trunk. But the potting is to make up for lack of humidity and frequency of watering that we can't always provide in cultivation. I'm still not sure if I should dig up the new catt I received and raise it's rhizome up to the surface or leave it as is. It says it was potted in July so there has been time for it to rot if it was going to I guess.

And then I have a rather tall catt The leaves and pseudobulbs stand nearly 2 ft tall. The new growth is going to be about an inch or more up the stem of the latest growth now in bloom. so when I repot do I leave it way up there? I can't see how I can get it down into the potting media without burying the older parts. Some of these plants are very misbehaved!!!