Hey guys, 'tis Danny Today, a video that you've all been
waiting for, or at least some of you. We shall be
repotting finally one of the Phalaenopsis orchids.
And this particular one is the Sarah Gold. Do you
remember we put this, I forgot the name, this aiding
material that was meant to keep the flower spike
straight, as it broke. If you missed that video, check it
down below in the description. So the flower spikes are
gone, flowers are gone, it is very safe for us to just clip
them at this point, just to make our life easier.
So if you don't know my problem with the Phalaenopsis
complex hybrids: They're a little bit too big for this
setup. I have the clay pot, the clay medium, everything is
kind of drying out too fast. In short words, it breathes
'way too much. Now it's okay for an orchid to breathe, of
course, but depending on climate and lifestyle can be a
little too much. So at this point I'm not entirely sure how
big the root system on this orchid is. I don't have a pot
prepared, so I want to remove it from its pot first, see
how the roots are doing, how many of them are still
alive, and then we'll decide on a plastic pot. Now what
I've discovered with my very porous pots is that roots
don't really stick to it all that much so in some cases
I can easily remove the roots from the pots without
actually breaking them. So first of all I'm going to try this
before I wet the medium. I like to actually work with dry
medium because it just flows faster and better fills up
those pockets. But in case that doesn't work I will have
to water the orchid. So I will try to grab this orchid from
the base of the axis, which is a little hard because this
orchid is leaning forward a lot. And let's see what
happens if I try to pull up a bit. This might look a little
disturbing but actually I'm not pulling 'way too hard on
the orchid.
Okay, finally this orchid came out.
Oh no. Yeah, I broke one of them.
And here we go. It wasn't all that much, I have to say,
except this one. But this is quite decent. The roots look
okay. Don't think I have o cut many. These were very old
roots. This orchid here again was one of those slightly
dehydrated orchids, so these roots were all very old
roots
and I can definitely cut them now. They're not alive
anymore. Oops.
Alrighty, learn from Danny's mistakes. When you see dry
Phalaenopsis roots, just check it on its entire length
because Phalaenopsis can have dry sections, but the
roots might still be alive. So let's see what I actually cut
here. Yeah, it was—oh, no—it was a perfectly good root.
So don't hurry like I just did. If you have sections that are
dry, chances are you will have sections that are still
alive. Do 𝒏𝒐𝒕 cut those like I just did. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 obviously can
be cut. However if you have sections that are towards
the tip which are dry, you can cut those sections and
leave the rest of the roots alone. So there we are, I cut
away more than actually intended but hey, that's that.
Now we can actually see the roots that have grown in
the clay pots. You can see they're very flat on one side.
This is where the pot used to be, and everything else
was inside [not touching the pot]. And also we can
notice them through their color. If they didn't receive
light, they didn't produce chlorophyll pigment so they're
not green, but they're perfectly viable. They still absorb
water and nutrients. So all these whitish roots, they
grew last year—including the ones I just cut—and about
the old roots, I don't really have too many old roots
because most of them were lacking to begin with.
But it has a decent root system I would say, considering
it was starting to suffer from dehydration.
So let's just get rid of these roots that I just cut right now.
And since my root system is not huge, I don't think I
need to go overboard with a plastic pot either. So I'm
just going to go prepare my plastic pot and come back
when I'm done.
Alrighty, so I chose a, I think this is a 14cm pot that I just
received from Anna Maria. For the purpose of this video,
I will use a clear plastic pot, but I have to tell you that my
Phalaenopsis most probably will not fit in clear pots.
I've already repotted a few that I will show you in clear
pots, just to film root systems, but the problem is that
these Phalaenopsis get very, very big with large root
systems and finding bigger clear plastic pots is not all
that easy and it's not all that cheap. So I prefer to save
my clear plastic pots for other, let's say more important,
plants or actually the plants with the roots I really want
to see rather than the Phalaenopsis. As far as we know
they're okay. We have a few for video examples but
most of them will be in white pots. Directly, actually.
So I'm going to show you. I already started. What I will
do now is re-use this medium. The medium is not
broken down and as I see it, it's not dirty or anything
either. It's perfectly fine to re-use it, so that is what I will
do. So we have a layer of medium on the bottom of the
pot and then we're just going to try to center the orchid
inside the pot. Now I don't want to place it like so. I kind
of like this leaning-over effect that Phalaenopsis do. It's
not space-saving, but it looks kind of pretty. So,
the roots obviously fit inside the pot, so I'm just going to
fill it up with medium.
And my orchid is done. As you can see we used almost
the same quantity of medium, which is nice. So all I have
to do right now is water this orchid very well and I'll
come back when I'm done. And here we have a much
happier orchid, at least from the point of view of
hydration.
Now I didn't place a pebble layer on the top simply
because I do have some other repottings to perform
these days and I don't have enough pebbles and I'm not
sure when I'm going to reach the pet shop. But with
Phalaenopsis I really didn't observe all that much
damage, if at all, on the top of the medium. The pebbles
will of course make sure that the water doesn't get lost
space to put the pebbles. You can see the medium is
not all the way to the top but I can definitely do that later
when I have more pebbles, since the new root tips don't
get damaged by ceramic. And I'll just have to see. If this
orchid drinks too much water I'll just rush to the pet
shop and just get the pebbles. Alrighty, Now let's look at
the other Phalaenopsis that I have, just so we see how
they're all potted, and let's talk a little bit more about
them. So as I was saying, quite a few of my
Phalaenopsis orchids, the ones that are smaller actually,
are potted in clear pots. And I think this is a good idea
because it's nice to see the root system, how it grows,
make some videos in which we show Phalaenopsis
roots, that's great. But really I don't need all of my
Phalaenopsis to be visible in this way. So what I started
to do is to actually pot them directly in the white pots.
And these white pots were sent by one of you lovely
people, from Raylene actually in the USA, from the Dollar
Store. Did I just say "from" a million times? I think I did.
Sorry. So yet again as you can see I don't have the
pebble layer and that's because these pots and this
setup actually remain wet for quite a lot of time.
In time, I might decide to put the pebble layer or just
leave it like this. The orchids are now much, much more
hydrated, they're not floppy anymore, and the pots are
big enough to maintain the roots happy and leave them
grow for at least a few years. So I do believe that most
of my Phalaenopsis will be potted in this manner, not in
clear plastic pots, but I do still have quite a lot of phals
in clear pots as well, so that's not an issue. We'll still see
the roots, but for the big monstrous ones really we don't
need to waste all that many clear plastic pots.
So there we have it. Repotting phals has become quite
an easy job to do and as long as I have pots, everything
is okay. I don't need to mess around with buying any
medium. I re-use the old medium. I don't remove the
medium from the older roots. If I have any dead roots I
just cut them off, and that's pretty much it. If I don't film
I can repot a phal in about five minutes.
And that's really a joy when you're dealing with potential
very big root systems.
So there you have it. I hope you've enjoyed this video.
As I was saying, repotting videos from now on will not
be very interesting because they're just so simple, but
it's actually better for the orchid.
Okay, so in the following days I will make a video with
the growth stages of Phalaenopsis orchids, since quite
a few of you requested it after the Vanda pattern of
growth video. Probably this will happen next week.
We will have the viewers competition as well. I will try
this weekend. I do have to do a few things, but I will try
my best. If not in this weekend then definitely next week
we'll make the competition, and if you don't know what
I'm talking about check out the description down below.
I'll link you to the original video that will explain
everything. And in other news: I finally changed my
phone after four years. My old phone I had it for four
years already and it was the greatest companion I've
ever had. And it actually has a little bit of a story behind
it that I was thinking to make an outro, not in a video or
anything so let me know if you're interested in that outro.
I might do it tomorrow. Plot twist: It kind of has to do
with orchids. The new phone is in a weird way related to
orchids. You won't believe it.
So yeah, let me know if you want to hear the funny
story with me and phones, because I have to say with
phones, I am very pretentious. I just might want to keep
them for as long as possible. So alrighty guys, thank you
so much for watching the video. Hope you've enjoyed it.
If you did, don't forget to give it a 👍 . A share would be
wonderful and if you like to watch other orchid videos
from me simply subscribe to my channel. I post on a
regular basis, and don't forget to turn on notifications so
you never miss a video. Now with that said, I'll see you
all next time. Bye.
In other news, I just discovered the seed pod has
cracked open, so I might have to do a video on this one
soon. I was not intending to sow the seeds or to send
them to nurseries to sow them for me. I'm not really
interested in seedlings of this orchid and sowing here is
actually pretty expensive. I'm not interested in it. But I do
want to keep the seed pod just for video purposes.
I've never seen orchid seeds and it would be interesting
to make a video on it so yeah, one of these days if I still
have any seeds left, nothing fell on the shelf so
it should be there, I'll make a video with orchid seeds.