All is not lost

[mattryan]

I just wanted to show everyone what happens when you get water in the crown of the plant and what can happen if you are really lucky. I only kept this 1 after all the leaves fell off because it had not too bad roots. So I took it out of the medium and put it into a terrarium. Watering the roots and still fertilizing (when I thought about it). Basically I forgot all about it and about 11/2 mos ago I started to notice a bit of green. This what it looks like today, hopefully it will continue to grow. I probably will be repotting it back into bark, question is should I leave it til keiki gets bigger or re-pot now? I have had terrible luck keeping keiki's alive (basal). I've had 2 of them and lost 1 and the other is growing, but slowly. Any ideas on when to do the re-potting. Thanks

cheryl

[nenella]

WOW! Congratulations! If it were mine I think I would not repot just now but let it grow a bit more seeing it's growing in the conditions you have given it. I'd be afraid to shock it too much.
Ideally I think you should wait until you have new root growth to repot.

[flexdc]

Good job!!

[kevin1217]

Congrats on saving the plant!!!

[WhiteRabbit]

Cool - don't try to separate the keiki, just leave it as is. I guess waiting to pot until it's a bit bigger can't hurt. When I crown rotted a Phal that had good roots, I just left it as it was and got a basal keiki. Been growing well - was growing fast the first year, but last year very slow foliage growth, but did grow a good number of roots in that time.

[james mickelso]

Shows us just how incredibly tough these plants are no matter what we do to them. They haven't been around for millions of years not to be tough. If this were my plant, I'd leave it where it is and not mess with it until it had good roots. Maybe a new leaf. It doesn't need to be potted. It will do just fine without any media just like it does in it's natural environment.

[camille1585]

That's amazing! Now I regret chunking out some crown rotted Phals with good roots. Since I saw no green bits left I thought it was a goner... Next time (though I hope there is no next time) I'll hang on to the plant.

[RosieC]

Wow, that's great. I tried a couple of times keeping ones that had got down to just roots, but in both cases the roots dies as well. Glad you've got yours growing

[Joy_of_books]

This gives me hope lol
my tragedy has only one little root and only one good baby leaf, i love these little enigines that could i'll keep fingers crossed for both of us

[SydneyH]

Wow, congratulations! I would never think that you could revive an orchid that was just down to it's roots.

Sydney