Re-potting advice needed to save inherited Paph & Phrag collection!

[sunflower1880]

I am pretty new to caring for paphs and phrags, but recently acquired about 12, severely neglected plants from the collection of a person who passed away recently. They are in degraded media, mostly brown roots, very dehydrated, but all are still alive..... what marvellous tough things they must be. I have ordered some paph and phrag potting medium; if I cut away dead roots and soak for ten minutes in K-L-N rooting concentrate, should I pot them up immediately into the soaked medium, or leave the roots to dry first? One care note I read, said to leave the bare root plants after soaking, to dry until a new root starts to appear, before potting up. Advice please, much appreciated!

[Raver]

No dont let the roots dry up before re-potting especially phrags, they hate having their roots dry. Yes re-pot them after they have been soaked in the rooting concentrate.

[Jef09071984]

Better pot them rigth away, pot them securly and not that loose so that the plants new roots appear nicely.

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Yes, better repot as soon as you are able. Sounds like the orchids have been given another chance to share their beauty. Good luck and do let us know how the repotting goes or if you have additional questions. Lots of helpful people and information here within this community.

cheers,
BD

[sunflower1880]

Thank you all for your kind suggestions; I've been re-potting furiously, and trying to make more room on shelves in front of my east windows! I gather from reading previous threads, that the phrags would like their pots sitting in a saucer of water, so I shall try that also. Happy growing to us all....

[Jef09071984]

Just put pebbles in the saucer so that your pot is not sitting in the water. I think Prags is the wild same with the other lady slipper orchids usually grow abundantly in limestone. So i suggest put some limestone in your potting mix.

[Raver]

Most phrags like wet feet thats why lots of people sit them in a tray of water (about 1" of water). Phrags will often grow roots into the reservoir but if you do decide to do this you will have to re-pot more often and change the water often, daily if possible. In the wild a lot of times during periods of months they have their roots completely submerge in running water.

[Daethen]

Aren't paph roots usually brown and hairy?

[Quakerbogey6918]

I've recently put all my phrags (28) and three Paphs ( kolopokingii, lowii and phillipinense x pinocchio ) on a continual drip irrigation system. They seem to be doing great but not going long enough to draw any conclusions. Feeding is by foliar feed using phostrogen, about half strength and just 3 times per month. If anyone uses this system please let us know.

quaker

[Dorsetman]

Just put pebbles in the saucer so that your pot is not sitting in the water. I think Prags is the wild same with the other lady slipper orchids usually grow abundantly in limestone. So i suggest put some limestone in your potting mix.

The limestone they grow in is often ( not invariably) the sort called Karst wjich is amazingly hard like marble or glass even - it is so slowly soluble that it can't contribute much in the way of minerals to the plants ; It is only a small group of paph species which grow thus - in fact they are called "the limestone paphs" - and are bellatulum, niveum, concolor, godefroyae - there might be another which does not come to mind at the moment. Some paph growers, including myself at one time, used to put a spoonful of dolomitic lime ( which is a limestone/magnesium mix) on top of the compost, periodically, and wash it in.
Then - speaking for myself, I went on an expedition to see them growing in the wild, and collected samples of the humus in the cracks in the rock in which P.bellatulum grew, and tested it ; I found the humus was in fact slightly acidic ( pH 6.0) and consequently putting lime on the compost would not help, only hinder. I also found P.concolor growing in a sort of sand, at the edge of an exposed mass of a hard non-limestone rock , and that had a similar pH, even higher in places ( 5.5) .
I have also seen where one sub-species of niveum grows ( P.Ang-thong) and that is a hard white limestone cliff - Ang-Thong one of a set of islands a 4 hour speed-boat trip from a place I was staying in the Gulf of Thailand, once - but I didn't get to collect any humus there , and the only plants I saw had been collected by the Reserve wardens, and potted in sand from the beach - and they didn't look very happy..

BTW Most UK Phrag growers who use saucers of water to stand the plants in, only do that in the summer - but then we have a cold winter .