Seedling Vandas with sad roots :( Help PLEASE!
 

Hello all! I'm new to the board, and I hate to be a downer on my first thread, but I've got a very urgent concern..
Last week I received some vanda seedlings via mail. They are my first vanda types and I'm super excited to grow them, but it seems I've hit a roadblock.
They came in tiny plastic pots with loosely packed sphagnum. The moss was still slightly damp when I unpacked them and the foliage all looked healthy with the exception of the smallest one that has what looks like a nasty sunburn.
In accordance with my new orchid procedure, I took them out of their pots to get a look at the roots and my heart sank. A lot of the roots were brown, some of them were shriveled, some were still plump.
I really want these little guys to become fine adults, and not be killed by root rot while they're still so young. At the moment I have them bareroot in separate containers, soaking them for 15 minutes twice a day, in addition to regular misting. I've got a low humidity so I'm making sure they're well hydrated..
I need to know if I should cut the plump brown roots or leave them. They don't have many roots as is, and I don't want to trim them if the babies need them. Also some tips on how to prevent any further rot would be well appreciated. Thank you in advance!!

Here is what I would do, it's not the only way, but one that works for me. I would get some seaweed extract and use that to promote root growth. I would also pot them up in small lava rock with just a small pieces of sphagnum at the top. I would mist them every day as well. If you don't want rise lava rocks you can always use large bark chips.

You can't post photos, unfortunately, until you've made 5 posts. Go to some other threads and reply to pretty pictures with something like "That's really pretty" until you reach 5 posts. Then post some photos of your plants and their roots. Also post the one that looks sunburned.

Plump brown roots are probably still alive. Older healthy roots that have stopped growing can look like this. Completely healthy young roots on Vandas are whitish to shiny white, and when you wet them the white changes to green as the outer velamen layer gets wet and the green underneath shines through. Healthy growing tips are green or reddish and shiny.

After you soak orchids for a while, dead roots are soft and brown, and living roots still have some firmness. Cut off the dead roots as far back as they are dead. Sometimes roots die back all the way to the stem, and sometimes part way back from the tip. Sterilize the scissors between cuts with rubbing alcohol or 10% household bleach mixed in 90% water. Let the plants dry for a few hours before you wet them again.

Are your leaves shriveling? Early water stress shows up as tiny longitudinal wrinkles in the leaves.

Your plants should not have arrived with sunburn. Do you mean one arrived looking sunburned, or do you think you gave it too much light? If shipped damp and in the dark for a few days, they might have started to rot, which could be brown spots.

When you say tiny pots, how tiny? What is the typical leaf span of your plants from the tip of one side of the fan to the other? Could you measure them and let us know? Most Vandas, even seedlings, wouldn't fit into tiny pots. The roots are long and the root systems spread out. They can be hard to squeeze into pots without damaging roots.

To water Vandas, get the roots really wet then let them dry out.

Really tiny Vandas are probably quite a challenge in a dry humidity environment. The ones I have came with leaf spans between 4" and 8" across. Some of the roots are 8" long.

I grow my Vanda seedlings in vases. There is a whole thread on this topic here:
http://www.orchidboard.com/community...ass-vases.html
You might find it interesting.

I spray their roots twice a day with rainwater holding a small amount of fertilizer. I soak the entire plant for a few hours once a week. I have low humidity and my plants look good. A number of people in low-humidity areas have had success with the vase method.

Good luck.

Yeah, I would pot these guys up too.

Pot them together in the same pot for about 1 yr or 2, then move them to individual pots.

Medium grade bark is usually the way to go.

Since you are in a significantly drier climate than mine, the Sphag recommendation is a good one, but be careful not to overdo it either. Vanda roots like a lot of air, and need to dry out fully before watering again.

They also like a lot of light to the roots, so a clear pot is preferred to an opaque one.

Soak them for at least 1/2 hr each day for no longer than 5 days. If you do this for a longer period of time, some of the roots, or portions of the roots will get used to growing in a wet environment, and when you take that environment away, you would have damaged more roots than you would have helped them to recover. More is not always better in this case.

Grow them in moderately bright indirect light, do not grow them in bright indirect light or full sun. I don't grow my Vandas in full sun, btw. If you plan to grow Vandas in very bright light like full sun, I recommend you make sure that your area's full sun will not torch your orchid.

I have my vanda babies and minis in clay pots with bark. I mist the top daily and in hot weather twice daily. They are doing great. The clay pots allow them to breathe and dry out.

Here is an early picture of some of them.

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x...Photo-0163.jpg

How are your Vanda seedlings doing?

Something else I've learned: Vandas don't like being in the dark for long, like during shipping. All the ones I've ordered have arrived with faint orangeish spots on the leaves that eventually dried up and turned to light brown papery dead leaf. The rest of the leaf remains normal unless the orangeish spot extends through the entire width of a leaf, in which case the distal portion of the leaf all dies. But, with proper care, even the ones with the orangeish spots continue growing new leaves and roots.

I used a kelp extract on my seedlings. They are growing new roots, and branching from the old roots. That is the intended effect for kelp extracts. I use KelpMax but kelp products are widely available, online, at big box stores and garden centers.

Also, Vandas need regular fertilizer. I have the book by Dr. Martin Motes on growing Vandas in Florida. I don't live there but I learned a lot from it. Dr. Motes recommends more fertilizing for Vandas than I have seen recommended for other genera. I've been using an MSU blend fertilizer, 13-3-15 with calcium and magnesium, intended for mixing in pure water (rainwater or distilled.) MSU stands for Michigan State University, where people developed this formulation. Lots of places sell this kind of fertilizer. I've been fertilizing my Vanda seedlings at every watering with 1/4 teaspoon of this fertilizer per gallon of rainwater. This is less than Dr. Motes recommends for adult Vandas, but mine are seedlings. Now that they're all growing I'm going to up the dose bit by bit.

Does it rain much in the summer in Utah? I've collected about a hundred gallons of rainwater in gallon jugs. If you don't get much summer rain, a cheap source of reverse osmosis purified water may be a large tropical fish store. I get RO water from The Ocean Floor in Phoenix for 4 cents a gallon, to use when I run out of rainwater.