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this is one in a series of orchid care videos sponsored and presented by
rePotme.com Orchid Supplies
Hi
I'm here to talk today about
repotting a Phalaenopsis Orchid
this particular little orchid here
is in a three inch ceramic orchid pot
we bought this at Mother's Day at the checkout line of our local grocery store
and it's a real cute little guy
it happens to be one of the new miniature Phalaenopsis
and so it has a fairly smallleafspan here
but beautiful blooms
yellow, french spot
very pretty and it's been in bloom now since May
and it's now late August so that makes it
May, June, July, August, about 4 months now
and it was in bloom when we bought it
and time now to give this guy a good little repotting
now, he has basically set one new leaf
since we've owned it - you can see it's a healthy new leaf
it also has another itty bitty new leaf
the stalk has died back completely indicating
this plant is going to focus right now on leaf growth
and since it's a young plant, it's a new acquisition
it's done blooming, it's time now
while it's in active growth
before it sets a new spike
for us to repot it
now since this
is a new acquisition of ours
we really have no idea what to expect in the root zone.
You may remember this plant if you get our newsletter or been on our website
reading some of the orchid care information
that we have out there, this is the plant that we bought when
it was in another enclosing ceramic pot with
absolutely no drainage
I think the article is called "orchid disaster diverted"
something like that because had it been left in a pot with no drainage holes
the plant probably would have drowned and it probably wouldn't still be alive today
what we did then is that we removed it from its enclosing pot
and we gently, since it was in bloom we gently took it out
of the pot that it was in
and we set it in the ceramic orchid pot
and left it to enjoy
its bloom cycle
now that it's done blooming,
it's time to repot it.
This particular plant we've gone and we've really soaked it
It's in moss so we wanted to make sure that it's really nice and wet before we repot it,
because that way the roots are going to be nice and flexible.
So what I'm going to do here is grab this plant
at the base
pop it out of the pot
It's going to be the first time that we're going to get a chance to look at the roots
and since this is a brand new plant I have no idea what we're going to find, so
we'll learn together I guess.
So what I'm going to start doing now is gently
stripping off the old moss
and see what we've got.
I'm just going to throw the old moss in a bucket that I have.
Never reuse old moss,
or anything like that.
Now let's see here,
so far so good
take flower clips off and
take the stake off
I can see we're going to need to cut that bloom spike
Try to get as much of this moss off as we can,
and as gently as we can.
We can optionally wash the roots at this point although
we don't have to
I'm going to detangle them here a little bit and see if we can get a good look at what we're dealing with
It's always exciting with a new acquisition when you really don't know what you're going to find at the root zone.
Sometimes you find a lot of dead and decaying roots.
This guy is surprisingly in
good shape considering
he was a grocery store acquisition. Ok!
I really am not unhappy with any of these roots, to be perfectly honest.
They all look to be in pretty decent shape.
I think I'm just going to leave them all alone.
I think what I'm going to do here is
I've got my clippers soaking in a little bit of Physan and water
and I'm going to go ahead and clip
this off at the base
I have another one down here that I did
not get clipped as low as I would have liked
and so I'm going to go ahead and clip that.
Let's see here
I'm going to check real quick here in between these leaves make sure there aren't any critters hiding
I don't see any, he looks pretty good.
Ok, now we need to do is scope out what size pot we need.
Usually when I repot an orchid I bring out a few different size pots
since I have no idea what I'm going to find at the root zone and
the pot it was in is not usually good indicator of what pot it is going into.
So, let's see I brought over a 3 inch slotted pot.
That's a little tight.
It came out a 3 inch but but this guy has
got pretty good zone and this is a little too small.
Okay let's take a look at this 4 inch pot here,
umm,
you can get a good look down in here
that we've got
pretty good room for the roots you have a little bit of room for growth
I think it's going to work pretty well
The thing I am concerned about though is that I think I do seem to have a little bit of extra room
and so let me use an old trick
to effectively
shrink the pot size just a little bit.
What I'm going to do here
is that we're going to take
some white packing peanuts
and these are the same white packing peanuts you get
in packages and in the mail.
These are the kind that are not made of cornstarch.
They do not break down. You want to use pure white ones,
you don't want the pink ones they're for anti-static,
You don't want the green ones are made of
recycled materials you have no idea what
they are made of.
You want the good old-fashioned white
polystyrene syrofoam peanuts.
I'm just going to put a few of them here the bottom the pot,
I think that about 5 of them looks good to me.
For some reason, Phalenopsis roots
really love
to have a few peanuts at the bottom of the pot.
So now,
I'm just going to nestle this guy in here and get
the base of the plant more or less
even with the top of the pot, just a smidge below
A few of these aerial roots I'm going to go ahead and
really just try and
encourage them to go down
into the pot here.
And then I've got some
nice Phalaenopsis Classic Orchid Mix
This is an orchid mix that's made with
long fiber Chilean sphagnum moss,
a little bit of sponge rock in here.
I put it here in this old collander
rinsed it out and squeezed it out
until its got the consistency
of a nice damp sponge.
You kinda feel like you'd like to
go and wipe the table with this it's
right about that wetness.
It's not too dry,
it's not too wet.
What I'm going to do here is
just start packing this moss in around
these orchid roots
do it gently I don't want to break any of the roots
Here on the other side the same
pack the moss down in
and encourage as many roots
to go down into the moss
into the nice happy moisture
I don't want to pack the moss too tight here for my environment
because I need it to dry out, I like to water the orchids
about one a week and depending on how tightly I pack this moss
they may not dry out once per week.
I like a nice medium to light moss packing.
OK, we've about got it.
Let's get it all tucked in here.
You can see we have our layer of peanuts at the bottom
a nice layer of moss
and we've encouraged the roots to go down into that moss
This orchid came without a label
I will put a label on it
that indicates when I last repotted it
and when it last bloomed
and I'll also indicate that I moved it up a pot size
because the next year I might want to consider not moving it up a pot size since I did so this year
That's about it for repotting this Phalaenopsis orchid
I'm going to go ahead and keep it
inside, a little lower light levels than
usual for about a week and let it adjust to its new surroundings.
For more information on orchid care and to purchase orchid supplies
please visit us at
www.repotme.com
Thank you.