How to repot a Cattleya orchid 

Antonia Orchids Hi Antonia, if this method works best for you than why not, it's always a good idea not to place decaying roots in new media as it will spoil it faster :)

What media use in transpotting catt

+Lee S. Thank you so much Lee! good luck with the Cattleya and send your students lots of love from me :D oh I can give you guys a shout out, just let me know what grade you have or the school name :D

+Marcella Miller :D congrats for being brave, now what will come might scare you a bit.. in the sense that the canes might shrivel, but that's normal if they have very little roots. So no worries, the new canes will produce roots and when they do the older canes will start to plump up as well ;)

+MissOrchidGirl Thanks for the heads-up!

Rosanna Rodarte Hi Rosanne, thanks for watching :) I will make a video on different orchid regarding compacting ;)

teetir1981 Hi, you can send me pictures here, just upload them to photobucket and send me the link to the picture in a comment. PS: I always reply to my comments but I am not online 24/7 so, just be patient ;)

Gardening at Douentza hahaha the horror :))

Also Danni I need help on how to make cattleyas grow up right because I grow them facing a window so all the growths lean to a side ?

Leyder Gonzalez not all bifoliate cattleyas will stale, not all unifoliate cattleyas will grow multiple psb per year :) it really depends on their genetics. If the new psb is producing new tiny roots, repot it now, later you might damage the roots if they get too big. I will make a video on how to make orchids grow straight ;)

andres barragan Hi andres, well it depends on the bugs, some might be harmless and there's no point in stressing the orchid with chemicals until you repot. So if you can upload a picture on photobucket and share the link in a comment I could take a look. Human antiseptics might contain the wrong type of alcohol, usually people use rubbing alcohol to kill off some buds, or hydrogen peroxide, so i'd go with those rather than other cleaning agents.

***** Hi Ritvik, sure I will make a video really soon :)

***** my pleasure :)

Hi, yes you can ☺️

John Dalzell Hi John, well the problem with coconut is that it needs some major treatment. It contains a lot of salts and tanin, for this reason it should be soaked in water for about 10 days, with water changes every day. Then it needs sterilization so it doesn't pass on disease. Even after this treatment I still have trouble with mine :( some brands sell properly cleaned coconut and it seems fine, I just had very bad experiences with coconut. So it depends on you, if you think it's not a hassle you can try preparing the coconut. If you don't want to bother, just buy some good quality bark :)

Hi, no I prefer not to use them, stakes work ok for me but if they might help you why not :) well some orchids are just climbers no matter what you do, if you can add some medium under the new growth you could try it, that's what I usually do. But other than that I just let them climb :) but depends on your situation I don;t know how it looks like.

yeah, disturbing isn't it 😰

lavenderiasis Hi, simpodial orchids have psb that are connected through a rhizome. If one bulb gets fed it will feed the other ones connected to it. So not all bulbs need to have roots to be hydrated :)

+Kreativitetskultur nu well first of all why do you say it needs to be repotted? you might be able to postpone it until the flowers are done :)

+MissOrchidGirl Because it is strangely potted in the media. The old pseudobulbs are potted inside the media, so only half of the pseudobulb is over the media, the other half is under the media. At first I thought I got two different orchids in the same pot, because the pseudobulbs where in different hights. But when I looked closer I saw what the problem was. I have already removed as much media around the old pseudobulbs as possible. But they are still a bit under the media. So if I can wait I will wait. I just don´t want to get rot at the pseudobulbs. :)

+Kreativitetskultur nu oh oh well yes that is a good reason to repot :) if canes are buried in the media they are prone to rotting indeed :) maybe you can dig them up a bit more for now

well.. depends what I see :) the older roots might be damaged or look already on their way out, in that case I would definitely cut them. But since this is more of a personal technique I cannot recommend you do it too, go with your judgement, see which roots are alive and which are dead, how they look like and leave them on if you think they should be on :)

Retired Stitcher personally I always repot my orchids from any grower I buy them from. The only exception is if I buy an orchid in spike or in bloom. I wait for the blooming season to be done and then I repot. For example, I recently repotted a rhynchostylis gigantea I bought from my local orchid nursery. It was not in spike so I repotted it as soon as I brought it home. And I am so glad I did because I found that it had a snail infestation. So I cleared out all the snails and sprayed with hydrogen peroxide to kill off any eggs.

I always repot Orchids when I get them home. I never know how old the medium is or what condition the roots are in.

+Jenjiyo phriendjiyo hello, congrats on your new babies :) well.. just because I never know the state in which someone's orchid is I prefer to say many of the times they will kill their roots.. but after unpotting so many of mine.. it's pretty much a bit of a rule, many of the older roots die and all of the oldest roots die off :)) in any case, you might want to cut away everything very very old and from the newest 2-3 psb just look and see which are the stiffest, anything that has growing root tips leave it on. In a month or so after repotting sniff the medium and if it has a rotting smell.. they died :P with oncidiums it's not as bad I've seen.. again cut away the very very old roots if there are any and leave the new, stiff ones alone. Oncidiums usually cope with change better.. Dendrobiums seem to keep all of their roots most of the times :) but best thing to do is to sniff the medium after watering in about a month or so, if it smells pretty awful, something died in there.

+MissOrchidGirl Awesome, thank you so much for the very quick reply :)

Hi Marcella, not all the time, for example for orchids who love water as much as Catasetums it doesn't really matter, they do well in full moss with a little care :) In general yes the thinner the roots are, the smaller the medium should be. But it also depends on the level of moisture they preffer. Paphs, Zygo, Catasetums and other moisture lovers seem to do ok in fine medium as well. Not the same story with Cattleyas since they preffer a lot of ventilation as well.

+MissOrchidGirl About a couple months ago I reported my oncidiums in large airy chunky bark in terra cota pots just to give the pseudo bulbs room to grow. With reg watering and fert they seem to love their new home. For the first time since I got them s couple years ago they are giving me spikes!!! So happy they're happy👍 Happy growing.

+Retired Stitcher Repotted.

Robert Gębczyński Hi Robert, oh sorry to hear about the accident. I don't think you should go through all the trouble of repotting though, it depends on the media. If it was moss, then yes be thorough with rinsing, if it was bark all is well, it's not so fast absorbing as moss. If you flushed it well all is ok, you can actually soak it today in a separate bowl and throw away the water afterwards. I think all is well ;)

Hi Marcella, honestly you will know when you see them :) even with Catts there is a difference in root thickness, there are some with quite thick roots and some with flimsy thin ones. The chunkier medium might be better for the thick rooted ones :)

Okay, these orchids were the ones that were frozen in the refrigerator on transport. Nevertheless, I put them in ICU, and after a few weeks roots started growing. The Willowbrook was looking pretty good and sending out a new cane, so I potted that one (great success). The Dowiana Mossaie seemed a bit fussy, so I mounted it. It's doing really well, new roots and an eye. I don't want to keep it mounted though - when would be a good time to remove from bark and pot??

Speedyfuzzball Hi, if you say you have mold issues it might be that the media is staying too moist or is broken down. If it stays too moist maybe it's suffocating the roots. What type of media did you use? also when do you water? you can also send me a picture if you'd like, upload it to photobucket and send me the link in a comment, hopefully I can tell better what's going on :)

Thanks so much for the reply! I am using bark media with both plants. I water the oncidium every 2-3 days and the cattleya around every 4 days. I'll try to link some pictures Oncidium. It might be hard to see but if you look at one of the bottom slits, you can see white mold i16.photobucket.com/albums/b8/speedyfuzzball/image.jpg2.jpg Wrinkling p bulbs i16.photobucket.com/albums/b8/speedyfuzzball/image.jpg3.jpg Cattleya has a new growth but the p bulbs are shrinking severely and the roots look dead i16.photobucket.com/albums/b8/speedyfuzzball/image.jpg1.jpg I am so sad :(

Speedyfuzzball to be honest, I really don't think you have a serious issue, I can barely see the mold. If you just repotted the orchids it's normal for them to shrivel up a bit. The new growths will create a new root system that will hydrate the old bulbs as well. The Cattleya seems to me like it has some bad roots, but that might not be your fault, it depends how these orchids were when you purchased them. So to me, things don't look that bad, the pots seem ventilated, media looks ventilated, it might just be an adapting issue. So just make sure you water them regularly, don't let them stay dry too long but not soggy either and just let some new fresh air come in to the growing room, molds hate drafts and fresh air. As for the mold, this is how a mold outbreak looks like ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Mq5LFpbHOuo.html

Oh I see, I thought I definitely had a bigger problem lol I tend to over react when it comes to raising animals or plants and I see something out of the ordinary. I'll keep watching them and hope for a nice recovery, thanks for your help Danny :)

Speedyfuzzball no problem :)

Pople BackyardFarm Thank you :)

Arib Hassam Hi Arib, call me however you like it's just short for my real name. I guess Danny is ok :P I am not sure what you mean with the new psb being whiter though, when it first starts to grow it can be light green or dark green, it depends on the variety of Cattleya :) some have darker leaves. Is this what you were referring to?

Jackie Fu It's ok it will pull through, catts are very hardy ;)

Sure :) if you think she is not super dehydrated you can try directly potting :)

It is not super dehydrated, so I will pot directly, mist the top and hope for the best. It's that shriveling that makes me think I made a mistake. Hopefully, under your guidance, I will gain confidence when re-potting Catts......

The hardest one is the first one, just hang on to it and afterwards they will not be so scary ;)

Alright, I am grinding my teeth with anxiety. I don't really water it, I just put a layer of finer bark on top and mist that from time to time. To me, it makes sense. Of course I don't let the entire plant dry out, but between waterings, a little misting (not on leaves) from time to time. Sounds okay?

sounds good, just don't keep the rhizome or new growths soggy ;)

Andrew Usher will look in a bit! don;t have that much experience with brassavolas as i do with catts, but from what I see on the short time I had mine, it's pretty much the same story.

+R Galatians thanks for writing, everyone has their own style on youtube, I find that if I make too short videos I miss out important information, I'd rather risk some people not liking my long videos than give incomplete information or skip on showing how exactly I cut a root ;) it's ok if this is not your style, there is someone for every taste on youtube :)

yeah but then, people would prefer short and brief tutorials, anyway..i respect that.

+R Galatians no worries, in a way you are right and when I will switch to a better camera and editing software I will inevitably get more compact videos, but when it comes to showing how things are done I just prefer to take my time and properly show in real time what I do, just doing what I wish I would have seen when I was a beginner :)