My Orchid Is Dying..... Phalaenopsis Orchid Rescue Repotting

hey what's up everybody Randy here back with another how-to video one of my biggest hobbies and obsessions is orchids I have probably right now close to 15 to 20 most of them I have some pretty rare ones but most of them are just kind of real cool ones I've found that big-box stores and things like that and really the majority of them are rescues so the big-box store is kind of sell them now problem is they don't know how to take care of them so what happens is I will go in and catch them once you know they've kind of lost their flowers and things like that sometimes I'll still have a few flowers and I can we bloom those flowers but this one as you can see is gone but one of the bigger problems is they come in these nice fancy deals here that don't have any holes at the bottom so the you know the people at the store they don't care they just water them and they'll end up getting like waterlogged inside here so you'll see a lot of the roots are dead so let's take a look at this one and I can kind of show you as you can see here this one is dying off and these you know flowers are gone and let's look at these roots you can see from this really good that these are these roots are just gone you know this comes from just being waterlogged see that that is just dead there these are all bad now the thing is these green ones are still good so that just lets you know that this thing is still alive and actually still has a bunch of life in it and it's gonna come back and be a beautiful plant and produce new flowers so today I am going to show you how i replant them and the process that I go through so let's get started here first thing I'm gonna do is kind of cut this off you want to cut this off as close to the plant as you can so that's gone you want to make sure that you dip your clippers inside some alcohol or something to get them disinfected which I did do then I like to actually I'm just going to use this stick because it'll have my chopsticks usually I use a chopstick and I'm gonna go in here now and just kind of clean off all of this old spag a moss so this step in with orchids they need to breathe air roots like to breathe they grow on the side of trees usually so they have their roots have a lot of air and so these companies usually will put them in spag of moss which is not bad for them but it holds it will retain a lot of water if it doesn't have any breathing holes and or drainage holes so as you saw with those that one didn't have any drainage holes so what happens is it just gets all nasty and soggy in here and creates a bigger problem now the thing is they do that on purpose let's let's be honest they'll say it's because they'll say it's really because they want to put in a decorative a decorative container but most people don't know you know how orchids grow and what their needs are so what happens is they'll get waterlogged so a lot of times people will pay really good money from a from a florist and they'll send an orchid to someone in that fork it will eventually just die I rescue a lot of orchids from people like in the neighborhood and things like that because they know they know I do it and they'll call me and say hey I have this orchid can you save it and when I get it it's all waterlogged because there's no drainage for the water and they're like I've watered it giving it Sun but it's still pretty messed up so now you'll see where we are as far as the roots like this is our root system as big as that was look there's a lot of dead roots in there so I'm gonna gone and kind of get rid of that just pick this out and this is gonna be quick so here we go this is pretty much done now you can rinse this I've heard of some people actually dip in there's a hydro peroxide I don't tend to do that so I'm just gonna go on and kind of this out the way and lay this down here so you can basically see there the green thick ones ought to route us what we're gonna count on to keep it alive if you touch it and it's hard it's thick and plump then that's a good route these are like sponges this does not have to have any soil or anything as long as it's in a humid condition this will actually soak up the air soak water out the air and keep this particular plant nourished and we're not nourished but it'll keep it hydrated so and you can see this is this is the true root here this is like a sponge to grab water to feed this root so I'm gonna go in real quick just not too so this is not too long I'm gonna go in and try to cut these I should've got some scissors excuse me grab some scissors real fast alright sorry about that I'm back so I got some scissors and again you want to dip these so I'm just gonna clip off all of I could technically leave those but I'm gonna look for any of these rotting anything that feels like it's rotting like that soft I'm gonna gone in get rid of that as close as I can there see that's go and believe it or not the rest of these are pretty good I'm gonna gonna leave these the actual roots on there and go from here now this as you can see is is cut and it's probably going to fall off and a new leaf is gonna come out of here and the first one because they go alternate like this one came this way this one come this way so the next one's actually don't come out fill this in so I'm gonna get some some potting soil or potting medium up to here we don't really use a soil for these so that's the one thing you don't want to use a soil so let me clean all of this off real fast and now I am going to pull this in here so this is what I use it's by a company here in Richardson Texas they make a mix and I had a little more spam moss but it has some soil and it has some fir bark like organic fir bark things like that so I buy a special mix to put them in so here we go so now I'm going to just get this repotted for you real fast and I do use styrofoam this is kind of old-school you don't see it as much anymore but I had some styrofoam here you know of course we worry about the you know the planet and things but the styrofoam is made and I feel like by reusing it I know the styrofoam is probably gonna be in here for another year or two so that's a year or two that it's left out the landfills and things so this does have quite a bit of holes but I'm gonna I like to break it up and drop it in it's actually a little staticky so I'm just gonna break it up into some smaller pieces here just fill the bottom and what this is gonna do is gonna create another layer of drainage like a thick layer drainage at the bottom so water just runs kind of run straight through now it's really staticky on the side but it'll it'll settle itself down so I'm just gonna drop a few more pieces in there then I'm gonna pick a few of the bigger pieces of the medium and drop in there so some of the bigger pieces of fur are gonna drop to the bottom again I'm creating another layer another drainage layer here so there we go good so that's that now I'm going to gone and get this in here I guess I should have while I was up I should have got another chopstick I have so many chopsticks so I'm gonna set this in here and kind of get it centered and where I want it and now I am literally just going to take so you can see it I'm gonna grab a spoon if I can find one so my hands are all of the way it's gonna grab a spoon and just kind of so I can get a lot of it and a lot of the dirt see there is some some dirt in there so it helps retain water so I'm gonna just kind of dump that in and I'm gonna hold this in place so it's centered and just kind of put this on all sides and now I am going to take my stick usually I set a chopstick and I'm just gonna kind of work this down into the roots here just working this into the roots hopefully you can see that so I'm gonna grab some more actually it's just gonna grab some more and drop it in just kind of dump that in there and tap it and then work it in so I'm gonna take a second just kind of work this in now probably fast-forward through this here what I want is for this to be this crown to be above the median line so I've got this all in here and got it worked in probably work it some more but for the sake of the video I'm just gonna kind of call it a day I can always work it in a little bit later so I'm gonna get that there and I'm gonna grab a little little bit from the bottom with a little bit more of the thin medium again and just drop that because that eventually when our water will work itself into the root system here there we go alright so here we go and as you can see now it's pretty solid mess here clean this up a little bit for you now the FIR when you worry because you should soak water your plants instead of top watering them because you don't want to get water inside the crown because if you get water inside the crown what's gonna happen is it'll if it doesn't have air slow it will rot so you don't want to do that so I soaked water you I'll show you that in a second but what I like to do at the very end so I can soak it without it you know floating out I put some more of spag of moss back on top so this is some other special some nice bag of moss I will reuse bag of moss I'm sure there's a lot of people that think that that's kind of sacrilegious but what I'll do is I'll boil it and get any germs and parasites and things like that so I'll boil it and then I will drain it and let it cool and usually let it sit so like this has probably been sitting a couple of months just kind of sitting around as edges as extra so when I get back to it the idea that it's you know something's there's living organisms organisms there's very slim I'm thinking so again I'm just gonna kind of pile this up notice I'm getting it up around the crown and I'm pressing this in and that's pretty much the repotting of it as you can see it's pretty much centered I'm kind of a stickler 200 cedis kick in so I'll work it till it gets to the center and so that is that so now what I'm going to do is sorry clean this up just a little bit I want to move all of this out the way and as you can see there we go now this is repotted and pretty much ready to go it'll go in the windowsill or whatever now I'm gonna take a little bit of water and just a tiniest bit as you can see just a tiny bit of food and kind of drop it in here stir it around real good you don't want a lot because the from it being in bad shape in the beginning and then the transplant and the cutting and all that you know it's a little bit of it's a lot of stress on the plant so I don't want a lot but I do want some in there and I am just going to put that in as you can see that's floating and if I didn't have this bag of moss in here it would actually just all at medium what flowed out so by pressing that moist patio Moss make sure its moist already let it soak for about 15 minutes to get wet now this is just gonna soak for a while and I'm not gonna push it down and what will happen is as it gets waterlogged and as does the fir bark gets wet it'll start to drop down and even out and once it's usually standing up like this I know that it's pretty much waterlogged enough and that'll be it and for the most part I will guess in about a month or two you know maybe in three or four weeks I'll probably start to get a new leaf and in about a month or two you'll never know that this was a rescue and I'm guessing you know by this time next year you will not you do it will have a flower on it so another successfully rescued orchid that more than likely would have gone in the trash or just you know somewhere but now I'm gonna take this and once I bloom them and they start to bloom again or they get healthy I usually just give them away or let somebody keep them while the blooms are still going so anyway thanks again for watching and I will keep up with you on this one and let you see the progress on it as it grows and gets healthy and things like that so if you want subscribe I got a lot of wacky content I got coming up hopefully soon subscribe don't subscribe not a big deal I just kind of put this information out for people who need it so or want it and so yeah so subscribe and follow because like I said you know tell them what you might see on my channel or whatever so anyway thanks again for watching and take care peace

Channel: Randy M Harris

Views: 2,113,170

Rating: 4.8363819 out of 5

Keywords: phalaenopsis. orchid. rescue. repotting. dying. root rot.

Id: eQ2IZoI0kKQ

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 16 2019