Revived the office-Phal but won't survive out of water

[NMFD]

So I inherited caring for the office's orchid when I started my new job. It's a big highrise and the orchid was in a tall pot, far away from any windows, and was showing signs of dehydration - limp, veiny leaves, white and shrivelled air roots.

My colleague was watering it a ton until I took over and it was in the original pot (tall-ish, mixed media and some really prickly moss) - it's probably 2-3 years old.

I pulled it out, gently washed it off, cut the dead/decay off and tried to repot it with new orchid media and water weekly with 3 ice cubes and that didn't work at all. It grew more dehydrated though it did sprout a new leaf.

I've completely changed tack and it's now sitting in a wide, flat bowl filled with only water or alternating with diluted black tea. It has perked up amazingly and all the leaves are standing up. It's now in a sunny window that gets a couple hours of sunshine.

My question is... I've tried removing it from the water and sitting it just above for overnight periods and when I come in the next morning the roots out of the water are all dried and wrinkly again. I doubt it is best to stay in water indefinitely - but I am thinking it needs a wide shallow pot instead of the common tall pots offered by most nurseries.

How can I get this orchid to continue being healthy in our very dry, not orchid friendly, environment?

[Subrosa]

Keep it in the bowl.

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by Subrosa

Keep it in the bowl.

Indeed, don't argue with success... Those roots have developed in the water environment, they are happy that way. Roots tend to develop to favor a particular environment and to resent being changed to a different medium. That's why the advice to repot when new roots are starting is so important. In this case, you have an environment where the plant is doing fine, so that would be a good argument to keep on doing what works.

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by NMFD

water weekly with 3 ice cubes and that didn't work at all.

The person that introduced the ice cube watering thing and recommended new growers to follow this routine ------ well --- hopefully nature (aka 'karma') will catch up him/her. I won't trust that person with a thousand foot pole.

---------- Post added at 07:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:41 AM ----------

Originally Posted by NMFD

How can I get this orchid to continue being healthy in our very dry, not orchid friendly, environment?

For myself - I would try relatively small diameter scoria rock - such as 5 mm average diameter. And then use one of those battery operated machines to automatically water the plant each morning, or every X number of minutes - eg. google: "Intelligent Garden Automatic Watering Device Irrigation Tool Water Pump Timer".

The timer can just come on, and spray a little bit of water into the media for say 5 seconds, or 10 seconds, or however much we want to set. Then the device will wait or X hours, then repeats the watering.

[aliceinwl]

I think you have a lot of options:

Full water culture: keep doing what you’re doing

Semi-hydro: I don’t grow any of mine this way, but if the roots are already adapted to water, this might be an easy transition. An internet search will turn up lots of tutorials.

Pot it up in your preferred substrate: The roots are adapted to being wet right now, leaving them to completely dehydrate overnight is a shock to the system. If you pot it up, the roots will slowly dry over a period of days, and you can rewater before they get so dehydrated that they shrivel.

[NMFD]

Thank you everyone! I think for the sake of ease for my colleagues and I, and the orchid, I'll just leave it in full water.

Hopefully now that it's on the road to health, and some further love that it will flower. But I'm happy that it has recovered and is no longer limp and shriveled.

[SouthPark]

NMFD ----- some growers mentioned that orchid roots growing in a water environment can transition to a classical media environment ..... but generally not the reverse.

The growing media mix you used most likely became dry too quickly, which likely means it was necessary to up the watering rate (frequency), or to have a mix that doesn't dry up as quickly as the mix that had been used.