Orchid 911--Rootless Zygopetalum!

[Reeses]

Thank you! The little fruit cup is brilliant. I've been having touble finding good pots, so I'll have to keep that in mind.

It kind of looks like you suspended it above the medium to get the roots growing. Is that accurate? If so, how did you suspend it? I was trying having it in sphag to sort of do a sphag-n-bag (the leaves are too tall to actually bag it) but I'm wondering if it would respond better to being suspended over the medium, and having to search for the water

[No-Pro-mwa]

I potted this up like this after it had started growing the new roots. I kept it for, I'll bet close to a year by my kitchen sink and used a spray bottle every morning and if it was drying to much twice a day to wet the spagh. My leaves were also long so that is why I took it out of the plastic bag. But I wanted to keep it handy so I would not forget to wet it.

Then when it got several new roots going I put it in this small bark mix I got from Kelly's Korner. It was very top heavy at first so I put 2 sticks on each side of it and had a twist tie attached to the sticks around all the leaves. I hope this makes sense. It is getting way steadier now as the roots are going down into the media. I'll go back through my pictures and see if any of them will show this, if not I can take another picture of it.

You know after re-reading your post I'll bet you could do it that way. When I first did this I didn't have these cups. I just let it set in another small plastic cup I had, picked it out of there every morning and sprayed the bottom all around the plant with it's spagh tied on it. I'm going to try and take some new pictures of my corn dog stakes I used to tie it and come back and post them for you. Wish I could give you some of my cups as I have several and will probably never use them all.

[No-Pro-mwa]

So here are the pics. I also put a bit more spagh on top of it so the roots were covered more.

[No-Pro-mwa]

I will have to post these in different post as it will not let me do more pics. The last one shows one root almost to the bottom of the pot.
It will not let me down load any more. I have no idea why.

[Cym Ladye]

Whatever you do, no not over pot when you have no roots on an orchid.

[Reeses]

Thank you for sharing, No-Pro-mwa! Last night I worked on setting the Zygo so just the base of the rhizome was buried. I think I had it potted too deeply. The pot it is in is definitely too big for it--as a relative newbie to orchids I didn't have that many to choose from. I may have to make a trip to Home Depot or something and see if I can find one. Thanks for the well-wishes!

[SimJam]

Nice save. Im thinking of doing the same (recycle plastic containers) to help my moms dendrobiums ... I think thats what they are ... poor things are parched.

[No-Pro-mwa]

Good luck SimJam, I hope you can help. I'm going to try and upload those other pictures.


It still won't let me upload pictures. I guess I will have to ask the administrator.

[Leafmite]

Originally Posted by Cym Ladye

Whatever you do, no not over pot when you have no roots on an orchid.

I have to agree. If it is completely rootless, I stand by my advice last time to put it in a sealed, clear bag (no medium) beside some heat source (furnace vent) and let the warmth encourage roots while the bag keeps the orchid from drying out.
A little story. My first Zygo, Louisendorf, was, unfortunately, a clone that wasn't fragrant. Disappointed, I really did not care about it. Still, when it was in terrible shape, I threw it in a bag and set it by the heating vent. I was rather shocked (maybe horrified) to discover that it was doing a very fine job coming back from the dead). I found a new home for it and moved on to some fragrant Zygos.
I gave away the two others, though, and now just have the seedling mackayi which is the one I have always wanted in the first place.
When there are new roots, these do great in a basket pot with LECA and some eggshell, watered often. It is best not to get water on the leaves, though, as they are prone to spotting and other fungus/bacteria problems.

[Reeses]

Thanks everyone for the great advice! That's why I love this forum just learned the hard way about water on the leaves--when I soaked it a few days ago in a rooting hormone mixture, the new growth was totally submerged...now it looks like it might be starting to rot I'll see if maybe I can tuck the few remaining leaves into a ziploc bag. Now that it's lost a few leaves, maybe it will fit!