Orchid repotting

[yellowgreentree]

Hi,

This is my first thread, and I need to warn you that I'm not at all green-fingered, but I'm trying!

A year and a half ago I was given a purple orchid. I'm not even sure what type of orchid it is, but it's of average size (I imagine) and is potted in some sort of bark mix. It has NEVER stopped flowering and growing, and I've really come to like it.

At the moment it has less flowers than usual, and it's roots seem to be coming out of the pot. I was simply going to buy some orchid potting mix online and put it in a bigger pot, but I was given another orchid (again, purple, but this time it's very small) and it's potted in a totally different thing; it looks very mossy, so I didn't want to buy the wrong one.

I then went to ask in garden centre, and the man there told me that it should be in a clear pot which totally threw me!

Please can somebody help - I just don't know what to do, and I don't want to kill this beautiful plant!

[Steve]

Thinking of which orchids show up in garden centers, the fact that it is purple makes me guess that you have a Dendrobium. See if your flowers look pretty similar to this:

Also note the shape of the unopened bud in that picture. That is very typical of Dendrobiums and not other common orchids.

If you can confirm that you have Dendrobiums, don't be in a hurry to move to a bigger pot. They do better in a small pot, even if some of the roots have to grow out of the pot. Your 2nd plant is growing in sphagnum moss. Some orchids do well in that. I'm sure some people grow their Dendrobiums just fine in moss. Personally, I wouldn't. You'll find a lot of garden center orchids in the moss and the main reason is that it is very light weight and cheap to ship from grower to the store.

A second though: Now that I read your original message again, the fact that it has never stopped flowering swings me more toward it being a Phalaenopsis. Maybe yours looks closer to this shape:

A Phalaenopsis can take a bigger pot and they actually do fine in sphagnum as well. When you repot, take away most of the old medium (moss or bark) and pull off any dead mushy roots before you pot it back up. The only thing a clear pot would do for you is to let you see if new roots are growing AND to let you see if there are still beads of moisture down in the pot. That might keep you from watering too often and rotting off all the lower roots. Good luck.