My Phal repotting problems!

[RosieC]

Originally Posted by glitchathon

RosieC, the media was not exactly damp, but definitely the bark had a little bit of moisture in it. But after leaving the bag open for a few weeks, the stuff is quite dry. There was no bad smell coming from it though. Do you think I should toss the bag and get new media? I do have S/H primeagra coming in the mail but not sure I want to shock the plants into a new media again.

Personally I would not use medium which was damp when I bought it. If you have no idea how long it was damp you don't know how broken down it is. As the medium breaks down the PH changes and that can affect the orchids even if you then dry it out again afterwards.

But that's just from my experience and others might not have had problems. I didn't have any smell when I used it on my frist orchid, it was only a month or two later when I tried to repot another two that I noticed the smell. All three are still in recovery a couple of years later but the first one was the worst and really almost died because I hadn't realised what was going wrong for several months.