Buds are appearing in October - can I repot?

[Agrias]

Hi! This is my first post here.
Last year around august/sept my mother-in-law bought me an orchid from Ikea. I never had any plants before, but this one apparently didn't care about me being a total airhead. Turns out now I like it very much, to the point that I registered in an orchid forum, haha.

When I got it, it was in full bloom and only had one very big thick cane. Around february another cane began to grow, and in may two more. Now it is pretty big! Sadly i didn't know you gotta cut the.."sprouts" (?) after it finishes blooming, so I didn't do it and now i am scared of cutting it wrong or out of time.

I am a bit worried, and that's why I need help. I see a lot of dead roots and I read you should repot it every 2 yrs, so I was a bit unsure of when and how to do it. I thought about doing it in May, then the other canes started growing fast. Then I thought of doing it now, but then 2 of the new canes started growing buds!

In August the main cane lost almost all its leaves on one side. One of the new canes lost one of the lower leaves.
I read this was normal, so I didn't care much. But now (end of October - the weather started getting colder (around 0 to 5C and I moved it to another window so it wasn't on top of my heater) more leaves started getting yellow, so I am worried my plant is actually in distress. :/

Would you guys take a look at the pic? What should I do?

[rbarata]

Your orchid is a Dendrobium. It seems to be a nobile type.
With these you don't need to cut anything (in fact you don't need to cut anything in any orchid) because many of the blooms will appear from older canes.
They bloom in late winter/early spring and grow new canes in the spring/summer so during that season they need lots of water.
When the summer ends and temps go down, the older canes lose their leaves and you must reduce watering drastically.
The medium you have in the pot looks like soil? It seems to be preventing the roots from breeding. Most orchids are epiphyte so their roots need moisture and airflow to dry them fast so that rot doesn't set in.
To achieve this you need a coarse medium like bark that creates little voids between the bark, letting air get in and out.
I think you might have the wrong type of medium and maybe watering too much for the season.
I would repot it now before you lose more roots. Also your pot is too large (at least half of what you have is adviseable). Denbrobium nobile like to be pot bound.

[Agrias]

Thanks It is not exactly soil, but it is not normal "orchid bark" i saw in some photos either...it is what it came from Ikea with, i have no clue of what it is - same with the pot

After I took the picture I noticed 2 new roots are growing, one is visible on the first pic.

I am watering it once a week, now stopping because it started getting cold.

When i talked about cutting i wasn't talking about cutting the cane, but the stalks from where the flowers were before so new ones can grow

---------- Post added at 06:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:29 PM ----------

If i repot, do i cut all those dead roots? Or should they stay?

[rbarata]

Dead roots must be cut...

[aliceinwl]

You can cut dead roots, but make sure you know what you're doing. It's much better to leave dead roots on than to accidentally cut live roots off. Because these are so top heavy, when I repotted mine I soaked the root ball and rinsed to remove the old substrate but refrained from cutting roots so that they could help anchor the plant.

General Care has a lot of good information about caring for nobile type Dendrobiums. I've had one for almost two years now. It's taken lows in the low 40s °F (~5 °C) and high 30s °F (~3 °C) without issues.

Following my initial purchase, after mine finished blooming, I re-potted it from the media I purchased it in into a 5:1:1 mix of orchiata, charcoal, and perlite and it seems happy.

[Ben_in_North_FLA]

Here is a link to Yamamoto dendrobum nursery in Hawaii, see the culture pages on their website... they are one of the best nobile dendrobium growers anywhere.
General Care[COLOR="Silver"]

[Keithj]

I am not a fan of the soil-type media than many of our orchids come in. It seems to retain moisture for too long and the retention can be uneven so when the top is drying the bottom is still too wet for watering. That's not to say that the plants can't do well in it. My first Dendrobium nobile, bought this year from IKEA, has done very well, with its new growth already bigger than the previous cane and still growing. I recently changed it to medium bark and it hasn't missed a beat. In fact, in my very limited experience, changing to a freer-draining medium can kickstart growth. When I repotted this nobile I also repotted a Dendrobium phalaenopsis and a Bratonia.

The DenPhal had a lot of roots but many had died through being waterlogged. It had some good roots but the resultant cropping left it very unstable so I staked it. Within a couple of weeks the plant has stabilised itself.

The Bratonia had a new growth that was developing but quite slowly. Since it was repotted there's been a spurt of growth

Keith

[katrina]

I could be wrong here but I think you might have keikis there, rather than buds.

As for the repot, given the state of those roots, I would go ahead and repot regardless of whether those are buds or keikis. It's in decline right now and that needs to be addressed as soon as possible or it might not make it.

[estación seca]

All the above give excellent advice. I will reitrate you should read the information Ben referred to above, and reread it from time to time. Dendrobium nobile types require different care from many other orchids - chiefly, they must be very cool to set buds.

[Paphluvr]

Originally Posted by Agrias

When i talked about cutting i wasn't talking about cutting the cane, but the stalks from where the flowers were before so new ones can grow

The stalks where the flowers were will not rebloom. It looks like you will get some new blooms higher up on the previously bloomed cane. Dendrobium nobile will generally bloom on this seasons mature canes. It is also normal for the canes to loose leaves, especially the previous seasons canes which are frequently almost bare.