need advise for my phal

[ewbie]

look what I discovered! huhu I'm a bad mama.

Pic 1 the one always facing me

Pic 2 when I turned it around to remove the old sphag

Pic 3 the roots before I remove to repot

right now, I soaked my phal's roots in hormex solution. I will try to repot it in a while. I'm still drying up the mount. I forgot to take a pic of the roots after removing it from the pot.

what's pic 2? is it a crown rot? what should I do?

[ewbie]

which is nicer to mount it to?

[RJSquirrel]

if you dont have a greenhouse, misting wont keep up a mounted phal in the house. you wont like the results.

Nothing wrong with sphag for phals. Its people that kill them not the sphagnum moss.

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[ewbie]

can you be more specific? I thought mounting phals are highly recommended. I wanted to mount it since the roots are already yellowish, which means I tend to overwater.

[Orchid Whisperer]

Phalaenopsis can certainly be grown mounted. However, plants grown on mounts typically require daily spraying to avoid dehydration (assuming you are growing in a temperate climate, at least part-time indoors, and not growing outdoors in a high rainfall environment).

If you sometimes take vacations away from your plants, pot your Phal in bark. This is the easiest care option. Water once or twice a week, at the sink, water flowing through the pot. Let the bark dry most of the way between watering, don't mist the leaves or let water stand on the leaves (promotes rot).

[bil]

Decent sized bark chunks are far and away the best medium. They are open enough to allow the roots to breathe.

I wouldn't take the comments about wet leaves and rot seriously. As yet no one has given me a single good explanation as to how wetting the leaves causes rot.. For the last year, I have gone out of my way to wash the leaves down and FILL the crown wth water every time I water.

In the wild, the crown and leaves get wetted regularly. To me it makes no sense to say that wetting leaves or crown will cause a problem.

Let me put it like this. Epihytic orchids, have to be tough. Theirs is a somewhat harsh environment. If your oorchids are so close to the edge tthat a wetting will kkill them, then I would venture to suggest that there are other problems that should be urgently addressed.

ie, if your orchid is way too cold, and you water it last thing at night, that might kill it. However, it would be the cold, and not the water that would be to blame.

Do please somebodt post if you can show me where I am wrong in this. If I am wrong I would love to be corrected, - if I am right, we can stop worrying about a misconceived threat.

[Tschimm]

Phals tend to hang upside down in nature so the water won't sit in the crown.
But I agree with the cold!
If it's warm and there is enough air movement, the water in the crown will evaporate faster and rotting problems are unlikely...

[ewbie]

Thank you so much for your replies, sirs and m'ams. I guess my location is not stated on my info. I am from the tropical country, Philippines.
No problem about watering coz I really like observing and watering my orchids every morning. And when I'm away, there are still people staying in the house.
We don't have cold climate here. The coldest we get is 24C at night from Dec-Feb. I grow the phal indoor.

[bil]

Originally Posted by Tschimm

Phals tend to hang upside down in nature so the water won't sit in the crown.
.

Yep, been told this one already. Still not had an answer to my follow up question.

In the morning, when it's cold, the mist will condense on the orchid, on ALL surfaces, and capillary action will pull it into all the narrow gaps between crown and leaf, so they are just as wet as if it were vertical, and you filled the crown so that the water then drains thru those gaps.

So, what's the difference? Like I say, if someone can tell me, I would be delighted to be corrected, but if no one can, then everyone is worrying over nothing.

I believed it when I was told, and then one day I got some water in the crown of onne, and whenn I went back to dry it, all the water was gone. So I filled it, and watched the water drain away.

So, for the last year I have quite deliberately filled the crowns of my phals, whether vertical or at an angle. Still no crown rot!

[No-Pro-mwa]

Bil I know this works for you but I sure am not going to try it. I have rotted a couple of them and one I'm getting back on track after having it in the media to deep and having to start the keiki all over again. I do think it is both as Tschimm say's. Water plus cold and perhaps not enough air movement. I had 63 F yesterday in my house as it was 41F outside. So some of us had better not try and see if we can rot one unless we are willing to lose it.