Help! Long overdue re-pot, rotten roots, phals and cymbidium growing conditions
Hello, I am new to this forum and am very happy for any help that I receive. I have three phalaenopsis (one of which was just recently purchased) and 1 cymbidium, all of which I recently re-potted. The poor cymbidium was in the same pot for several years, so by the time I finally go around to re-potting it, all media was gone and it was a giant ball of roots. I cut back the ones that were a bit rotten, but couldn't break up the mass much, so I just put it in a larger pot with new bark media. Was this an okay move or should I have made more effort to break up the pseudobulbs?
I also have two phals which I've had for years, and suffered a major loss of both leaves and flower spikes last year when they froze as I moved across the country. They were coming back (slowly), forming new roots and looking okay, but I decided to re-pot as they both had been in the same bark media for years. One of them (clay pot) actually had a tiny leafy growth at the base (keiki?) which I didn't notice until I had already shaken it free from the media it was in. I don't think that survived. One phal (photo 1) had aerial roots that now have rusty brown spots on them, where there weren't any before the potting.
The other phal I just purchased from Lowe's for $1 had soft and wrinkled leaves, but seems to be coming back from the brink of death. I did notice that some of the roots that were okay when I potted it now seem to be dying. Should I take this plant out and cut those roots off, or leave them alone for now and let them settle into their new pots?
I'm guessing that I probably need to be patient and allow these poor plants time to acclimate to their new media. But, any suggestions you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
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