Keiki survived for years but now it's not looking good
Ok so as for this one, it has a story, it was a keiki many years ago, the mother plant died (at least I think it did) and the keiki had enough roots to be planted by itself. The orchid itself never really grew much, it always stayed the same size and never had even more than two leaves at the same time, once a new leaf grew another withered. The situation right now is that it's got one big leaf and one small one that never really grew, it decided to stay small.
Anyway so now that I finally decided to do something after years of neglect and repot my orchids, when I got this one out of it's pot... it was bad, really bad. most roots had gone rotten and the potting mix was wet and mouldy.
After I cut away the rotten roots, there were 4 roots left. I also had to cut away some of the rhizome as it was not looking good, it was black, I suspect also rotting. After I did that I put some cinnamon on the "wound". Unfortunately I did a mistake there, some of the cinnamon landed on some roots, and now the part of the roots that's the closest to the rhizome is all dried out, brown and shriveled. I did flush it in water as soon as I figured out what I'd done wrong.
I really hope this poor orchid can recover from this.
I've got it on top of some sphagnum moss right now, and I've been spraying water on it every day. However I am not sure I am doing the right thing. Is this all right, or would you suggest something else?
What I understand is that orchids like humidity and to be honest my house has just really dry air lately, it's very dry. Temperature around 20 degrees C = 68F, humidity 30%. I can't afford a humidifier, or anything fancy now.
|