Doesn't it just hurt when you break a root?

[Shyulace]

I picked up a pretty nice looking Phail noid at HD today. It had two phals in it with a keiki growing on both.

I did my customary repotting because it was overstuffed with sphag and decided to try and separate the two phals carefully into their own pot.

Nope, no luck. I first accidentally knocked off a total of four cute root tips and snapped two roots. Now I just feel just... Heartbroken? Haha I know it sounds weird to feel that way but I was super careful. They were just really snug together and I probably shoulda left them alone.

Now I'm just worried that I set the plants back alot and will prob get a bud blast. Heh

Has anyone else ever gone through this before? I feel really bad about those plump little root tips sitting in the pile of old sphag. Any comforting stories?

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

If you wet them, that limits that kind of damage, but it doesn't eliminate it.

I break roots on many of my plants too, and they aren't just Phals. As long as the damage is not severe, the plant will easily recover.

[prc11]

I hate when that happens. I had to re mount an oncidium the other day and it had a lot of new roots. To my disappointment, about half of them had black tips the next week.

[rangiku]

You shouldn't feel too badly. It's the season for new roots. Now, if you had broken off a spike or two as I did...

[camille1585]

Could have been worse, at least you didn't snap the spikes! It's the season for growing now, so you'll probably get lots of new roots. And I wouldn' be surprised in the broken roots branched out with new tips.

[tucker85]

I know what you mean. We work so hard to get these plants to grow and then we sabotage our own efforts. Breaking a root used to bother me until I watched a nursery worker repotting orchids. He sometimes repots hundreds a day. He was extremely rough with plants. He was pulling off old leaves and cutting off roots all over the place. As the two previous posts mentioned, it's the spring growing season now and your orchid will probably grow right along unphased. Good luck.

[Paul Mc]

I don't know who it hurts worse, the plant or me, lol...

It is the growing season as others have mentioned, so hopefully you will be fine. You might want to consider giving it some DynaGro Pro-Tekt to help with the environmental stress (i.e. broken roots and repotting). I've used it to great success on my orchids that were having major issues. I would think it could also be used as a potential offensive move to help your plant from any stress it might have encountered.

[Shyulace]

Thanks everyone. I actually do feel better knowing that I'm not the only one that breaks roots on occasions. And wow, I never thought about breaking a spike. That must really be bad.

It's just that I'm still new to growing orchids and never broke roots or tips beforehand, so it was a sucky first experience.