Thoughts on repotting - one of my favourites.

[FranningtonBear]

This is my favourite of all my phal’s and probably the plant that really started my passion for all things orchid… I have owned her for about 8 years now and she is known as “the overachiever” in our house because she is scarcely not in bloom!

Anyway… I have been reporting a few orchids recently and pulled this one out of her big pot to have a look.
I last repotted this plant a little under 2 years ago into the 13” lot she is currently in.

I am torn, she is very crowded but the roots look healthy and the medium is not degraded. Would you repot now or not??
Plus a picture of her current blooms since she is beautiful!

[Roberta]

What I sometimes do with Phals whose roots are growing out of the bottom of the pot or otherwise going wild, is to just drop it into a slightly larger pot, with no medium. The space between the pots tends to stay a little humid, and it's a place to control the roots without changing their environment. (Santa Barbara Orchid Estate does this with Catts, just dropping the whole thing into the next size empty pot. I have gotten plants from them where, upon repot, I found the original back part (roots mostly gone) in maybe 2 small pots, and then maybe 3 or 4 beyond that were just full of roots between the pots. After all, these are air plants... with that bit of humidity held between the pots, they grow very well.

[Dimples]

I repot phals anytime they need it. One plant could go a year between, but I repotted a bunch in October and a few responded so positively that I did it again in December. I put them back into the same pot with the same bark, but the looser bark structure gives the roots a little more breathing room.

Repotting is as much about giving the plant room and incentive to grow more roots as it is about changing out the medium.

Definitely wait until it’s done blooming to do anything beyond what R suggested. I repot in bloom if it’s a new plant, but not if it’s only a little cramped.