Cymbidium root rot!
 

Hello everybody, I bought a large and healthy looking cymbidium at my local greenhouse on sale. The worker said I should repot it into an 8 inch pot, so I did and found out it had major root rot. All but the top inch of the root mass was rotted. So I cut all the roots off and let them sit in a dilute bleach solution for a short amount of time. I also coated the edges of the severed roots in cinnamon as I heard it was a good natural anti- fungal and secured it as good as possible in the 8 inch pot. Any further suggestions? There is abundant foliage and new growth, do you think the plant will make it and re-grow roots if I foliar feed it? And how often should I water it, if at all?
Thanks

Hi Jjspm, I don't know much at all about Cymbidiums but I hope you can nurse it back to health.

I do want to add a few things though, in the future you might not want to put cinnamon on the roots of orchids as it is a desiccant and might actually cause the remaining root to dry out rather than heal and grow more. Also, I don't think bleach is good for plants either. In the future you might just want to use Physan or a similar anti-fungal instead of those two things. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.

Good luck!

soak the roots in fish emulsion or seaweed extract for a few hours then just place it in an orchid compost/ pot it up, water normaly and water with fish emulsion every week. that will encourage the roots to grow and it will also keep the foliage healthy!
hope that helps! :)

Physan is not available in Canada that leaves many of us here in a dark regarding what to use instead for desinfection and bacterial rot prevention.

I bought algae-kill from the spa supplies dept in Wal-Mart as I've read it has the same ingridients but the challenge is to know the proportion as this stuff is highly concentrated and designed for large pools, not plants.

Ok, so what should I do now, remove the orchid and wash with water? How do you make fish emulsion?

Looks like I'm going ice fishing!

LOL I don't know about fish emulsion but maybe you can get your hands on some KLN or Superthrive, both would probably help in starting new roots.

Pictures of the roots and plant would help. Cymbidiums are very tenacious plants and will grow new pseudobulbs which new roots will grow from. The old growth is not much more than store houses for the new growth. Losing the roots on them is not catastraufic...catastrofic...catastroufic....oh hell....not that bad. How far along is the new growth? The new growth will put out roots when the pbulbs are about half grown. Some sooner some later but this is what is important. The new roots on the new growth. The plant is not some weenie and has the ability to fight infections on it's own as long as the conditions from which the infection/affliction arose has been changed. Fresh media (I'd opt for a coarse bark based media which will allow good air movement) will go a long way toward eliminating any further bacterial or fungal attacks. It is winter now and the plant doesn't need a lot of water. Don't water after noon so that the roots have a chance to dry out by nightfall. Cool and wet will make matters worse. Cool and dry is ok. The old pbulbs will see the new growth through until spring when it starts to warm up. Remember that the old growth will not put out new roots. They are finished growing and are there to support the new growth. Fish emulsion is a very weak fertilizer. The plant doesn't need fertilizer right now. It needs to dry out in fresh media.

you can buy fish emulsion in the fertiliser part of the store.