First potting attempt

[Ro3bert]

My Phals (all five of them) are from Grocery Stores and are the verity “Water With Ice” (which I don’t). The potting medium seems to be a very densely packed moss which seems to retain moisture for an extremely long time; it doesn’t seem to me to be very air friendly.
The first one I got has some (not too many) brown, desiccated roots above the potting one of which has developed a fuzzy mold. I’ve been reluctant to repot any of the five since they are in full flower but with this development I don’t see any alternative.
I got some sphagnum moss but after reading more on OB I decided to get something with bark in it. Two days ago I began soaking some in water (again, advised by OB members) and after 48 hours soaking this morning will start re-potting it.
With that in mind below are a number of images of my potting equipment. Somewhere I have very small side cutters I got when I was into plastic automobiles. Can’t seem to locate them now so will probably look to get small scissors.
Today, Saturday, I got down to the business of repotting the first (and smallest) Phal. This is an experiment for me so I hope I’ve done it correctly.
As I said there was some white, fuzzy stuff around the total top, not a lot but enough so if you looked closely you could see it.

I bought some drinking cups at the grocery store and modified with openings around the sides and bottom. In this image you can see the relationship to the original ceramic container, (thought I’d taken a picture of the Phal in it’s original cup but apparently I didn’t.
This image is of the container with the holes I melted in with a small soldering iron next to the ceramic pot the Phal came in.

Here are a couple of images of the fuzz, the first on the root I’d mentioned and the second on the other side of the pot also shows it in it’s original plastic container.

Fourth image
I was a bit concerned about the saph sticking to the roots, almost as if glued to them; it was difficult to get off. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of the roots after cleaning them up. However I did have to trim some roots and, damn forgot to put some cinnamon on the cut ends but liberally doused it in H2O2 then watered it and drained it on some paper towels.
Hope it is not too stressed but I’ll just have to wait to see.

[WhiteRabbit]

Goos job.

For what it may be worth - I never use cinnamon on roots ...

[Leafmite]

It looks good!

[Ro3bert]

Originally Posted by Leafmite

It looks good!

Hope it goes well.

Originally Posted by WhiteRabbit

Goos job.

For what it may be worth - I never use cinnamon on roots ...

Since this is my first re-potting and considering how many people seem to use it I thought I aught to.

BTW What part of N Cal are you living/from? I hail from the part of Sacramento that used to be N. Sacto. Went to Grand Union HS.

[RosieC]

Looks good, but cinnamon on the roots is not a good idea. On the parts of the plant yes, but not the roots as it can dry them out too much.

I did find a website recently where someone is giving plant advise and there is a page advising on natural treatment of ailments in orchids. It talks about cinnamon and I would agree with everything in the text which does not mention the roots at all... however then there is a picture at the top of the page of orchid roots with a caption something like "sprinkle cinnamon on the roots to keep it healthy". I actually contacted the website owner to say I strongly disagreed with this due to the drying affect, I don't expect to hear back though.

A slight dab on the cut ends probably wouldn't hurt too much... but I never do it and don't have problems.

In fact these days I don't do much to wash or treat the roots as I used to when repotting. I just remove as much of the old medium as possible, cut off the dead roots and pop it back in the new medium.

[Orquiadicto]

Originally Posted by WhiteRabbit

Goos job.

For what it may be worth - I never use cinnamon on roots ...

Me neither. Never had any issue with it.

[WhiteRabbit]

Originally Posted by Ro3bert

Hope it goes well.



Since this is my first re-potting and considering how many people seem to use it I thought I aught to.

BTW What part of N Cal are you living/from? I hail from the part of Sacramento that used to be N. Sacto. Went to Grand Union HS.

I will use cinnamon on cuts when removing rotting / rotted pbulbs, but try to keep it away from roots.

I'm in / from San Jose!

[Ro3bert]

Originally Posted by RosieC

Looks good, but cinnamon on the roots is not a good idea. On the parts of the plant yes, but not the roots as it can dry them out too much.

I did find a website recently where someone is giving plant advise and there is a page advising on natural treatment of ailments in orchids. It talks about cinnamon and I would agree with everything in the text which does not mention the roots at all... however then there is a picture at the top of the page of orchid roots with a caption something like "sprinkle cinnamon on the roots to keep it healthy". I actually contacted the website owner to say I strongly disagreed with this due to the drying affect, I don't expect to hear back though.

A slight dab on the cut ends probably wouldn't hurt too much... but I never do it and don't have problems.

In fact these days I don't do much to wash or treat the roots as I used to when repotting. I just remove as much of the old medium as possible, cut off the dead roots and pop it back in the new medium.

I intended to just dab a bit on the cut ends of the roots I cut, not the whole root(s).

Originally Posted by Orquiadicto

Me neither. Never had any issue with it.

So far all seems to be OK. I'll wait a week then, if everything is still OK, I'll re-pot the rest.

---------- Post added at 08:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:12 AM ----------

Originally Posted by WhiteRabbit

I will use cinnamon on cuts when removing rotting / rotted pbulbs, but try to keep it away from roots.

I'm in / from San Jose!

Sonya

Well, i intended to only put cinnamon on the ends of the cut roots but as I mentioned forgot.

BTW I'm having problems posting threads and replies when I use SlimBrowser. It will not let me include Smilies, change the size of the text although the type shows. And when I go to Preview Post there is an error code that shows and all typing in the reply window disappears. The error message is as follows: "The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 1 characters".



This only happens in SlimBrowser and only showed up yesterday, even though I hadn't made any changes. There doesn't seem to be any problem with IE or FireFox.


Any thoughts?


My grandparents lived in Los Gatos so I drove back and forth thru San Jose many times. Never stopped at the Winchester House though.