Need help with my recently imported, bareroot Neofinetia!
 

I'm happy, my new Neos (Fugaku and Yoroidoshi) have finally arrived! Poor plants have been through a lot, they were imported from Japan (Seed Engei) by someone in the UK, he nursed them 2 months, still barerooted, as they sat in customs for a long time, and now they spent a week in a box traveling to the Netherlands.

They look a bit dyhydrated, but the roots are very nice. So my question is, now what??

I've just put them in a bowl of water to soak (wish I had some Kelpmax...) and am going to pot them up later in net pots in a bark+sphag mix because I only have AAA NZ sphag, which doesn't work very well for wrapping around a sphag mound. I'm having a really hard time finding AAAA NZ sphag in Europe... :( Should I be keeping them warm and trying to encourage new root growth at this point (there are a few nice growing tips on new roots), or start them directly on their winter 'rest'?

Camille, I hope other more experienced Neofinetia growers show up here with their opinions. I’ve only been growing these since last November so this is actually my first winter rest period to begin in my care.

Currently my plants are not in their rest, soon though as the temperatures outside become colder.

If I were you I would worry about rehydrating the plants before the rest period. Maybe a month at least of good hydration before you decide to rest the plants. With good roots you should be fine. If leaves appear dehydrated they my drop off if you start the winter rest too soon.

Potting them in your mix should be fine, just don’t let them dry completely. If you have a terrarium or other means of upping the humidity, I would recommend using that as well.

I have a Kuroshinju in intensive care, lol. I received it during winter and the poor thing would not wake up this past spring. I honestly thought it would die, it’s roots dried up, it’s leaves were clamped. Nothing seemed to help until I put it into my greenhouse shelving unit. It is still in there, still looks weak but has a half a dozen new roots finally! I’m confident it will live, not sure when to remove it from its current location, it will need a winter rest!

Neofinetia are tough little plants, I hope yours respond to your care and survive for you. Do you have pictures of them? Hopefully you will have better advice soon.

The Fugaku has nice roots, but has very little variegation. It was harder to see it on the photos the seller sent around. One of the lowest leaf does have variegation, so I'm hoping that with good culture and good light it will come out better on new leaves.

https://shutterbug.ponzio.net/i.php?...03aa159-xx.jpg


Oroidoshi has much fewer roots; but they are all healthy.

https://shutterbug.ponzio.net/i.php?...b5798df-xx.jpg

Sorry for the image size, I'm starting to use a different photo hosting site and there is no button for grabbing bbcode in it, so I have to do it manually in OB and OB won't take the code I added for resizing the image...

Though I've had one or two Neos in my collection for at least 25 years, until recently I had no idea of the variety within the genus. In the past year I've gone from two to about ten. I've received a few bare root, and a couple which needed medical attention. Before I discovered KelpMax my practice with them - and any bare root plant - was to soak the plant overnight in warm water into which I dissolved a couple of teaspoons of sugar. I can't remember from whom I got this practice but I can say that it helped. I've never used this sugarwater treatment on a Neo but find that it's great with Phals.

The roots of Vanda falcata should begin growing again. If they are too damaged at the tip, they will often begin growing new roots along the length of the old one.

I am not sure about the leaves. You could try setting the roots in distilled water for 48-72 hours to see if the leaves will re-hydrate. It sometimes works with the Vanda-types.

Last night they soaked in a sugar solution, so we shall see! I went through my entire package of AAA NZ moss and pulled out all of the longish strands, and had enough to use to wrap mounds. So I potted them up the traditional way. My boyfriend was laughing when he saw I was using a beer bottle to build the mounds on!

I hope that I didn't put too much sphag, I'm so afraid of killing these like I did my first Neos years ago. Maybe I should have stuck with my standard bark mix, I've never grown anything in sphag... :(

https://shutterbug.ponzio.net/_data/...3400c84-sm.jpg

Still not sure about putting them in winter rest right away, but my gut feeling is to keep them in warm and humid conditions for the coming weeks.

From Nov 4th I'll be gone for 2 weeks with no one to water, so I'll probably put them in a cool spot and start their rest then. Hopefully I'll find some nice Neo pots in Japan and can stick them in those when I get back!

Why did your previous plants fail?

I no longer respond to Neo culture threads because I horribly neglect mine. I feel a fraud. Having admitted that, mine do okay. Maybe they would do better if I put more effort but they do well enough for me.

I don't know what you did or didn't do previously but don't overthink this.

Good luck with them! They look really great!

That's the thing, I'm not sure what went wrong. I had them in sphag mounds, and 2 died after dropping all their leaves. Maybe I wasn't waiting long enough between waterings, that's the only thing I can think of. That's why I'm a bit nervous of having Neos again, because I'm not quite sure what went wrong the first time around. The third one died for reasons not due to me.

My first dropped a lot of it's leaves. It was in small bark and it was because I didn't let it dry enough. I now just grow them bareroot in small glass containers just like vandas which I guess is what they now are anyway.