Switching from medium to bare root

[MuscleGirl'sHobby]

I recently bought a couple vandas which were in orchid baskets that were inside regular pots with medium in the bottom. The medium was retaining a lot of water and growing tons of moss. With my regular watering schedule, they were certainly going to rot.

So I cut the pot away from the basket and carefully removed the medium from the roots. The plants pretty much lacked any roots not in the medium. Are the roots that were accustomed to growing in the wet medium going to handle being flapping in the breeze?

Is there anything I special I should be doing to help the plants get used to being bare root instead of potted in medium?

Thanks!!

[cb977]

Just make sure you water/spray/mist the roots heavily...until you can see the green root inside

[MuscleGirl'sHobby]

OK, good. That's what I'm doing. It seems like these roots dry out much faster than the vandas that were grown bare root all along.

[Swamper]

Did you happen to snap any pics of how they came? My personal preference is bare root. They love to be soaked, very thirsty. They also love to dry quick so I would have done the same as you.
Im curious about the seller, was it online? I never buy online cause I have so many local vendors and they only sell bare root vandas,so some info would be appreciated.

[MuscleGirl'sHobby]

Yes, it was an online vendor. I haven't been able to find any vandas around here. I even attended an small orchid show a couple weeks back. The only vandas (and there were just a few) were way out of my price range. I did manage to buy a nice Phaph and Zygo though! And both for less than I would have paid for one vanda there.

I don't have any pictures that actually show the inside of the pots they were in. It was an interesting little set-up, and I'm sure it works great for seedlings, or people who can't water often or have low humidity conditions. I am not one of these!

They way they had it, the plant was in a standard plastic vanda type basket, and that was inside a regular plastic nursery pots so that there was room between the bottom of the vanda basket, and the pot. In there was very fine lava rock which had gotten very moss covered. When I cleaned it away from the roots it almost seemed like there was some soil in there, but I'm sure it was just from the moss. The plants appeared healthy and growing well.

[Swamper]

Cool it sounds like they were happy and in my opinon happier now. So whenever you have time, we'd love to see a pic of it

[JennS]

I would say just water them very often for now. It doesn't hurt to water more than once a day as long as the roots dry off quickly.