First Cymbidium - overwintering advice please!
 

Hello everyone, I had to visit the garden centre today, and on the way to the till, a £4 cymbidium just happened to 'fall' from the reduced table into my trolley :)

I have two questions.

1) I usually repot bargain orchids as soon as I get them, but I know cymbidiums are best repotted in spring, so would you advise waiting till then?

2) I know Cymbidiums like a lot of light over winter and I have two potential places for him - one will have more fluctuating temperatures than the other - better to have fluctuation or not?

Any other comments/advice gratefully received.Attachment 140632

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I think it's best if you share with us the temp values.;)

One place will be fairly steady between 14-17 day and night. The other will go from around 10 (not below) to 20.

I presume the units are Celcius.
I would opt for the 2nd. How is the light in both places?

I agree about the second location. The best place to grow them in a house is if you have an unheated porch, temps may even be lower but they do really well in them.

Light is pretty much the same in both places, maybe a bit more in the place with the lower temperature drop. Good light for most of the day - it will be too strong in summer, but I can move him then.

So, I think you already know where to put it.
Now, lets talk about the medium...from the photos it seems there's soil in the pot together with something else. What's the medium?

It looks like a kind of coir/coconut fibre mixed up with bark.

Do you have them at the rain (when it does)?
My Cymbs are outside, in a north (but bright) balcony.
Prevalent winds here are coming from north or west so they get every storm nature throws at them. The medium is coarse medium/large bark only (the ones with medium size bark took a lot more time to grow as fast as the others with larger bark.
The extreme temps are between 40 ºC (sometimes over that) and avg 8 ºC (occasionally bellow freezing).
Considering this, they don't care if I take care of them or not, they grow and bloom anyway.:)

Repot time is after blooming is done, which is spring/begining of summer.

No, it is indoors now. We are in winter here in Wales, with some hard frosts and snow already. I will put it outside in the spring.