Newbie.. needing advice plz

[Whoababy23]

Hi There,
Sorry this is going to be long, but I am in need of help in reviving 2 orchids.

I'm in need of some advice on how to help 2 orchids I received from a nursery that are not in great shape. I ordered 4 orchids from this nursery and 2 of them seem to be in ok shape, but 2 of them are in pretty bad shape. If you look at the plants, they "look" ok, but upon further inspection they are in fairly bad shape.
The 2 plants in need of help are...
Psychopsis Mendenhall "hildos" and Paph. Kemp Tower.
Ok, upon receiving them and gently unpacking them, I did notice how very light they were. I figured, ok, they didn't water them because of shipping. So I put them in the window and added a few ounces of tempid water to help warm them up and give them a drink. Upon watering the "Hildos", I noticed the pseudobulbs (sorry, I call them camel humps lol) were pretty shriveled up and noticed that the potting media didn't appear to look to be in the greatest shape. It's in spike/bud.. It has a very tall spike and a tiny bud at the top. Leaves look ok, 1 has a scar on it, but nothing major.
The Paph. Kemp Tower looks beautiful on "top", meaning just looking at it in the pot it appears healthy and beautiful.
Well after a few days of them adjusting and still worried about the appearance of the potting media looking pretty bad, I decided that these poor plants needed to be repotted in fresh media. Then OH BOY what a shock I received!
I picked up the "Hildos" first. It was potted in a 4 in. tall, dark pot. So I got out all the "stuff" to repot it, proper media, a clear 4 inch orchid pot etc. Upon bringing it over to the kitchen, I gently tried to remove it from the pot.. Hmmm this poor thing is hard as a rock, so I gently squeeze the pot to try and loosen it up alittle to remove the plant from the pot. After several minutes, I finally removed the pot from the plant and was horrified! The plant was root bound (yes I know orchids love to be in tight confined areas) but this was root bound. There was VERY little potting media and the roots were brown and hard, and were the shape of the pot. It was growing "up" and didn't have room to spread out, meaning the leaf span, like it was pushed down into the pot too far down when planted and couldn't spread out like most orchids leaf/leaf span. The roots were alittle crisp. I removed what little potting media there was from the roots, washed the roots off and soaked it for about an hour or so to help this poor baby to survive. I repotted it and placed sphagnum moss that was washed and dampened around it's roots and placed it in the pot with proper media and watered it.
Basically the exact same thing with the Paph. Kemp Tower, but it's roots were in worse shape than the "Hildos". It's roots were more brown and crisp and I was horrified when looking at it and inspecting it. Like I mentioned, it looks beautiful up "top" but the roots are horrible. I soaked it, did the same thing as I did to the "Hildos" (placed washed dampened sphagnum moss around it's roots) and repotted it in proper media.
I did order some superthrive I think it's called, to possibly help these poor babies to thrive after the abuse I see that they received from this nursery ( I will NEVER buy from them again!)

But my question is for all of you who have more experience than I do, is there anything else I can do to help these plants survive? With the poor things being to me, severely dyhydrated, it is so tempting to over water them, but I'm trying my best not too.

So any advice on how to nurse these beautiful orchids back to health would be greatly greatly appreciated!

Thanks so much in advance!

[tucker85]

It sounds like you've done all the right things to help the plants recover. Don't overwater, like you mentioned, just water properly and they should be fine. Superthrive is good. Personally I like Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed for plants in distress but You shouldn't spend a lot of extra money unless you have a large orchid collection. Just give your orchids normal recommended care and they should do well. Luckily it's the begining of spring when everything starts to grow. Good luck.

[Whoababy23]

Hi Tucker,
Thank you so much for the reply! I greatly appreciate it. I will look into the Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed that you mentioned. I don't mind spending alittle money in order to help out these plants.

As far as my collection.. Well it started out with one my husband bought me for Valentines day.. A Phal.. but the grower put I'm assuming blue food coloring in the water as it stated on the tag that it will be white and not blue.. It is a large Phal. with 2 spikes in bloom.. Well that just started the collection, it gave us the "Orchid Fever!". We now have 20 orchids, many different varieties. And of course having the "fever" there are more that we would like to add to our collection down the road.

I'm looking up that Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed.. it says it's a fertilizer.. Should I fertilize these plants with them being so freshly repotted (2 days now) and the roots in such bad shape? I don't want to damage them any further than they are already damaged, but realize that these plants are in desperate need of help.

I wish I would have taken pictures of the roots when I repotted them so that I could show ya'll.

Thanks so much for the help!! It is greatly appreciated!

[beezermommy]

Have you contacted the vendor for a replacement or refund? Sometimes things happen and I would give them another chance to make this good.

[Whoababy23]

Hi Beezermommy,
No I haven't contacted the vendor yet. I'm debating on that at the moment.. It's either that or me just chalking this up to one of those "lessons learned" type of thing. I had just figured that with it being a "local" nursery, meaning within my state instead of out of state that they would be decent and the plants not be so stressed out from the shipping process. The nursery owners seem to do alot of "teaching about orchids" at various places so we had assumed it would be a good place to buy them, but we were wrong.

Thanks for the reply!

[tucker85]

Originally Posted by Whoababy23

Hi Tucker,
Thank you so much for the reply! I greatly appreciate it. I will look into the Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed that you mentioned. I don't mind spending alittle money in order to help out these plants.

As far as my collection.. Well it started out with one my husband bought me for Valentines day.. A Phal.. but the grower put I'm assuming blue food coloring in the water as it stated on the tag that it will be white and not blue.. It is a large Phal. with 2 spikes in bloom.. Well that just started the collection, it gave us the "Orchid Fever!". We now have 20 orchids, many different varieties. And of course having the "fever" there are more that we would like to add to our collection down the road.

I'm looking up that Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed.. it says it's a fertilizer.. Should I fertilize these plants with them being so freshly repotted (2 days now) and the roots in such bad shape? I don't want to damage them any further than they are already damaged, but realize that these plants are in desperate need of help.

I wish I would have taken pictures of the roots when I repotted them so that I could show ya'll.

Thanks so much for the help!! It is greatly appreciated!

Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed is usually listed as a fertilizer but it's not a fertilizer. It's a suppliment that contains growth and rooting hormones. You will still need to use a fertilizer once your plants start growing.