Soft, droopy leaves after repotting
 

Hi, I recently repotted two of my Phal orchids (one about 3 months ago and the other about 1 month ago). The leaves on the first one I repotted went a bit soft and droopy, but still has not firmed up. I thought it would by now, after adjusting to its new pot. The other one has the same problem. The lower leaves are the ones that are especially soft on both plants, but not turning yellow. Other than that, the plants look fine. Is this normal behavior after repotting?

The potting mix is a bagged mix especially for orchids, made up of bark mulch, charcoal, and perlite. There was no sphagnum moss in the mix and I didn't put any in the pots, which are clay. Could it be that they are drying out too quickly? Should I get some sphagnum moss and repot them again, or would this really hurt the plants? I water about once a week. Maybe I should water more often? I just don't know what to do. I don't want to lose these orchids. Can someone out there who is an expert advise me about this issue? Thanks so much!:idea:

Well, I am no expert, but I will try to help :) Your Phals likely went from wet moss in a plastic pot to a looser mix (hopefully) in a clay pot, which would likely be a drier environment. When you say a bark mulch it makes me nervous. There are some mixes found in box stores that are way too fine for most orchids. It should have some bark CHUNKS and other things like charcoal and perlite. You can add a bit of moss to help with the transition if you want.

How were the roots? Were there lots of good ones? How much do you water? Was the mix soaked well before re-potting? Sorry lots of questions to figure out how things are.

The Phals grow on trees in the wild with roots exposed to nice warm rains and breezes. Keeping that in mind, you need to let some air get to the roots and the roots need good moisture, but then need to dry out before re-wetting.

I like to use a kebab skewer that is left in the pot positioned near the bottom centre. That will be the last place to dry. I pull it out and see when it is time to water. You need to build a watering schedule based on the plant drying out-not just weekly or every 10 days etc.

In the meantime, while the plant adjusts to the different media you could mist the leaves daily. I have done that with rescue Phals that had almost no roots. Just make sure water doesn't sit in the crown or it could get crown rot.

Your Phal should be in a pot that only just fits the roots. If it is too big, it will stay wet for too long and root rot can happen.

If you still have problems, some pics would help. Good luck!

Can we see some pics of your phals? Can you show us pics of the roots? You can take the phal out of the pot with care and repot it once you've taken pics of the roots. When I repot a phal I water it once in it's new potting media and then leave it alone for at least a week. But then I live at the beach so the humidity is around 50-65% and coolish. If it is dry when you repot, you must spray the leaves daily or every few days to keep the leaves from becoming dehydrated. In my experience once the leaves lose their turgidity, plumpness, they won't get it back. That doesn't mean the leaves aren't doing their job but they won't straighten up again. If the roots aren't taking in water then the leaves will start to dehydrate and continue to decline. The roots tell the main story. In my potting and growing experience with phals, they aren't stressed that much by being repotted in a new media as they are being repotted and then drowned. If they are potted in spagnum moss, when you repot them, tease out the spagnum. Carefully. Carefully, then repot in a courser media. Again, phals grow on tree branches in the wild. No soil. They can be dry for a while with little damage. But when you repot, I would mist or spray the leaves daily for the first week or so to help the plant adjust.

Hi Silken & James, thanks for your replies. As I had described in my message, I used orchid media that is chunky, with the ingredients that you mentioned. When I took the orchids out of their original plastic pots, they were in sphagnum moss only. I removed all of it and the roots looked excellent, except for a few dead ones, which I cut off. I had thoroughly soaked the media prior to potting. Then after repotting the plants (in clay pots), I watered them. I water them about once a week, but maybe I need to water twice a week and mist them often as well, because I know that clay pots are very porous. As for photos of these plants with droopy leaves, you can see them on my profile in the album called "Droopy Leaves". If you have any other advice for me, that certainly will be helpful. Thanks for all your help.

If I were to bet on what is making your leaves droopy, I'd bet it is too much water. It is difficult to show you how resiliant your phals are and that they don't need as much water as you think. Any more than once a week is a lot. How warm is it where you live? How humid is it? Do you have a fan on to give good airflow around your phal? I potted a phals last week just the way you did, and I haven't watered it since. I feel the weight of the pot and when it gets light, I dip it in a pail of warm water. DI water to be exact although RO is sufficient. That's all I ahve been doing. If it is warm, hot, or dry I would mist the leaves as often as I could. Try that and get back to us.

As I mentioned previously, you need to see how dry the bark is before watering again. Everyone's conditions vary so what works for one, may not work for someone else. One person may need to water twice a week and another with the very same plant but in a different environment would water only every 10 days. Misting the leaves till you figure it out should help.

i have the same problem, only one of the bottom ones turned yellow and came off...=( they seem to be better...

You know, rosslyn, just my :twocents:, I had trouble with one of my orchids when I repotted it a few months ago. The leaves drooped just like yours did and since then "stiffened" up again but retained the same "droopy" look. *shrug*

My plant is now growing a TON of new roots and a new now, so eventually (probably a few years down the road) I imagine those leaves will fall off in natural due course. They are still green so I am not too worried about it. The poor thing does kind of look sad and depressed compared to the others, but I think it will recover. :)

My take on this is that the roots that were good for the plant while in sphagnum, just aren't working as well in the new mix.

See my response to Karlie : http://www.orchidboard.com/community...tml#post501478

A transition from moss to bark is a major one, I've not had success transferring moss grown plants into bark, it's just too big a change and as Ray said the roots are tailored to the moss environment and won't work well in bark.

Having said that I can't grow phals in moss either so I never leave them in that. I find moving them to lecca, and either watering every couple of days in lecca or using the S/H watering technique is an easier transition from moss.

You CAN transition a plant from moss to bark, but it's best to do it when brand new root growth is happening on a nice strong plant. That way the old moss tailored roots aren't needed and the new ones growing will be tailored to the bark.

Once Phal leaves have gone 'leathery' and floppy they don't get firm again, but if the plant can get new roots established it should grow new leaves which will be strong. I have one that had root problems years ago and it still has some of the old floppy leaves at the base (although most of the leaves from then have now gone) but it has some great strong leaves at the top now.

Ray, do you think that roots are taylored to a particular media? I don't think so. The root should be the same no matter what it is growing in. The velamen should have the same porosity no matter what. I don't see a difference in the structure or growth whether in moss or bark. Do you find a difference? I have always thought that it is the micro-environment close to the root surface that is the difference between the various media. I know some who grow many different orchids in moss yet I can't and I think it is because where I am it is humid and cool. Whereas someone in say Texas or Ontario, Cn may be warmer and dryer. They might be able to grow in moss but not course bark. They may have to grow in fine bark where I can't without jeopardizing the roots. If you see a difference in roots let me know. That may answer some questions I have. Like when I get the phals from HD or Lowes and have to take off dead or mushy roots, if I put them in medium bark with sponge rock they perk right up (for a plant that has had major surgery anyway) but if I put them in fine bark without sponge rock they suffer. It'd be interesting to see why the difference. Here are some phals I repotted two weeks ago and they are still ok with little change in them. I have some others that were repotted this past weekend and are too new to tell if they will deteriorate as I had to trim off more roots due to rot. I potted these in medium bark, sponge rock, and charcol. You can see the sizes in comparison to my finger. The moss is there to keep the bark from falling out of the phal planted horizontally and the phal with the moss on top I put some to help keep the dampness in the pot. But you can see the large holes I put in the side of the pot to help dry the media out. I only water these when the pot becomes light weight. That may be once a week. I think a lot of the problems people have when they repot an orchid from HD or one they have been given is that they tend to keep it too wet. What do you think? How do you repot yours?

Geez, James. Do me a favor and use the return/enter key to make paragraphs! That's tough to read as one giant one.

Orchid roots tailor themselves on a cellular level to the environment they are in, not to the medium specifically. Some of the more significant differences are in the permeability of the cells to water and gases.

Rod Venger (of the formerly Venger's Orchids in Colorado Springs), who originated "water culture" delved into this with some PhD candidates at Texas A&M who actually did some research in the area. I had a copy of the study summary, but have no idea where it got off to.

Everything is a matter of degree. If I move a plant from sphagnum to straight bark, for example, that environment is very different, so the existing roots (having low water permeability, due to the readily available supply, and high gas permeability to overcome the restricted accessibility of the compact moss), may "struggle" to take up enough moisture in the bark environment, and the high gas permeability can lead to severe water loss for the plant, so new roots that can absorb more readily are essential.

If I move that same plant into S/H culture however, the "new" and "old" environments aren't all that different, and the urgency for new roots isn't there. The current roots may not be optimal, but they are "good enough" for the time being.

I don't think the wet/dry issue is related solely to the plant. Don't forget the folks that successfully grow in the constantly-wet S/H culture, or more extreme, in water culture where the roots are totally submerged. Consider this:

How does the potting medium react to the watering load? If the medium is compact or uses a lot of fine-grade ingredients - or has decomposed to become fine and compact - the spaces between particles are small. Surface tension is therefore capable of holding water in those spaces, completely blocking them and stifling the air flow to the roots that is so essential to their functioning and survival. Allow it to dry - large hoes in the pot, lots of air movement, and lower humidity enhancing that - and the spaces open up again and let the roots "breathe". (I firmly believe that the lore that "orchids have to dry out between waterings" is based upon a misinterpretation of that phenomenon.)

I suspect that your "perking up after repotting" observation is less related to root morphology, and more to stress relief. I have seen it myself, both with orchids and with terrestrial plants being divided and repotted in the same soil - no "tailoring" needed then. The differences seen when comparing plants repotted into different media might be simply one of moisture availability during the "perking" process.

Thank you. Sorry about the run on sentences and non paragraph divisions. I can build a house or motor without plans or specs but writing is not my forte. I'm good at spelling but not writing. I, like you, enjoy more in depth discussions and scientific explanations for that in which I am interested. I still don't quite understand water culture and semi hydro. I have tried to grow some very finicky orchids, not following excepted methods of cultivation and lost them right away. Again thanks for the detailed explanation.

You sir, and I need to go out and discuss stuff over a glass of our favorite "imbibement".

Indeed it would be fun and enlightening. And you would enjoy the young women strolling the beach at sunset here.;)