I think you will want to consider repotting the plant, after the bloom spike is spent and the newest growth begins to emerge. It's quickly out growing the pot that it is in now, and pretty soon, there will be no room for the latest growth to lay down roots. The little round grey pellets are time release fertilizer, so you shouldn't need to worry much about feeding or fertilizing for now. As far as what you should repot it into, well, you can use pretty much whatever you have on hand, though I would not recommend putting it in pure sphagnum moss.

Sharry Baby is a nice easy orchid. Plenty of light all year round and warmth, will tolerate direct sun early morning and evening. Water well in summer,light fertilizer, hardly at all in winter when it usually flowers. DONT USE COCONUT FIBER.It is often not washed properly and contains taurine which is very toxic. I have never kept a plant alive that was growing in it.If you can't get tree fern, a chunky bark mix with a little charcoal is next best thing.

Well......I was just about to post that i've got my remaining two Oncidium Sharry Babies in coconut chunks plus bark and they are growing gang busters.

Nearly everything i've got (and that is about a thousand orchids) is in various blends of bark and coconut chunks.

When i said remaining, hopefully by the end of the winter show season i'll have nil Sharry Babies. a lovely orchid but not for the space challenged.

I do have some reservations about CHC and i would never use it straight and i'm not sure that it is the optimum potting material for Phals.

Have to do some research on Taurine.

I have a Phal that's in a coconut chunk/fiber mix, and it's doing fabulous. I've had it for over a year. In fact, it's doing the best out of all the Phal hybrids in this house, and it's what got me to repot all my Phals into a coco fiber mix. Mine consists of rough coco fiber, a finer coco fiber, fir bark, a Phal bark mix that includes charcoal and perlite, and tree fern fiber. They are doing well. I've also put a Neofinetia into a similar mix, and it looks happy as well. With that said, though, the coco fiber I got was from a place that sells tree frogs and terrarium supplies, and they said that it was safe for reptiles, as they are extremely sensitive to salts and chemicals. So perhaps mine is safe because it is safe for reptiles? In any case, the first Phal's coco fiber mix was what it came in, so I have no idea where that originated, and it's the one that convinced me to convert to coco fiber.

I've also read somewhere that there's a difference between the dark brown stuff and the light tan stuff. The light tan stuff is full of salts because they use ocean water to process it. The dark brown stuff is often processed in fresh water, supposedly. But don't take my word on it, it was a quick Google search and a quick read, so I'm not 100% sure about the details.

This is the second warning ifraser has given regarding the coco fiber material. I guess he can't find good quality, well rinsed coco fiber in Brazil. Thankfully this is not a problem for us in the US, Australia and Europe.

I grow many different genera in coco chunks including phals, fine rooted catts, onc. family, moisture loving dens, the string coco and the peat type coco.

For people who grow other plants indoors/g/h in peat based mixes, the fine coco/perlite combination will NEVER get fungus gnats. Coco is also renewable, peat is not.

I do my own rinsing of coco products even when they tell me it is rinsed to be on the safe side.

Brooke

Brooke:

May I ask what you mean by "Coco is also renewable....?" Do you mean wash it and use it again? What kind of water do you rinse your coco in when you rinse it just to be safe (RO, rainwater, filtered, tap, etc.)?

Arthur, Q. and Brooke:

Phals have such thick roots it makes me nervous I might overwater. What regime do you go by? I have my Phals in clay pots above humidity trays.

I now have one Oncidium 'Sharry Baby' and one Odontocidium Wildcat 'Hung Seng'. It's odd to me that they're in different mediums from the nursery. Sharry Baby is in a moss of some sort and bark while Wildcat is in volcanic rock and bark. The Wildcat seems to have finer roots than the Sharry Baby and there is not fine medium for Wildcat.

Another question on Sharry Baby and Wildcat: I realize repotting should be done after blooming is done, however, Sharry Baby has clearly outgrown her pot and neither Sharry Baby nor Wildcat have sufficient drainage or air for the roots. They're in 3" square plastic pots with plastic floral paper wrapped around them and they're stuck into a base due to their top-heaviness. When it's time to water I'll take them out of the plastic wrap so they can drain properly, but is this going to be detrimental to the plants until I can repot? I mist the exposed roots each day, but not so much it soaks the medium.

Hort lvr, pitch the plastic wrap. It can keep the medium and roots too wet for too long and can kill an orchid. Often, garden centers and big box stores use this for marketing, and many times, they know nothing about orchid care, or are selling inexpensive orchids that are meant to be thrown away when they've finished blooming, or both.

The fact that your 2 Oncs are in 2 different mediums could well be testimony to orchids' adaptability, esp. if both are doing well. Depending on your zone and growing conditions, some mediums may be better for your plants than others - for example, in FL, sphag might not dry out quickly enough. Then too, some growers just prefer certain mediums over others.

Unless you have special circumstances, a generic orchid bark mix w/ charcoal and perlite should be fine for your Oncs, but I don't know if you need medium or fine bark.

Only your first picture is visible to me. If some of the potting medium has broken down and washed out of the pot or has been displaced by roots or both, and many roots are out of the medium, that may have saved your orchids from death by plastic wrap, depending on how long the plastic's been covering the pots. Reason: less medium in the pot w/ fewer roots in it to stay wet too long.

If the plants have been happy enough to spike and bloom in their current "pottedness," minus the plastic, they can stay put till they finish blooming.

What I've understood is that, except for Phals, repotting an orchid in spike, bud, or bloom will dry up the spike, blast the buds, and make the blooms wilt and dry up. A possible exception is if you lift the plant, medium and all, straight out of the original pot, put plant and medium into a slightly larger pot - usually 1-2 sizes up, and fill in w/ new medium, including new medium in the bottom of the new pot. No guarantees, unfortunately.

I've never tried this but have repotted lots of Phals in spike, bud, and bloom w/ no casualties. (Oops, I take that back - I've repotted the Psychopsis w/ 3 everblooming spikes - washed off all the bark, trimmed roots - the whole process - and the spikes were fine. I've heard this usually doesn't work for spikes that produce one set of blooms and then die.)

One option for top-heavy plants is to put them in a slightly larger clay pot. If that doesn't work, put stones in the bottom of the clay pot.

For watering your Phals & Oncs, the skewer method will help.

The color of your Sharry Baby's flowers are luscious.

Whitecat8

WC8,

I threw away the plastic wrap late last week because I felt it was keeping the moisture too long - I'd had the Oncs for a few weeks before needing to water.

Yesterday, I put them out in the rain for a few hours. They seem to have enjoyed it.

The Sharry Baby has a lot of fine roots above the medium and they do dry out quickly. The Wildcat is not as much of a concern as there are maybe three larger roots coming out of the medium while the fine roots are still within and being protected.

They are very top-heavy and when it comes time to repot I am concerned with finding a pot that will not tip over. I like the idea of rocks. I think I'll be using that. Do you think I should use some sphag or spanish moss to protect Sharry Baby's roots until she can be repotted?

Hort lvr, I put small stones and marbles in the bottom of every plastic pot for stability & drainage. When you repot your 2, maybe clay pots would be better, if that won't make the medium dry out too fast in your conditions.

As for the sphag on top of the roots, I don't have enough info about Oncs to say. WC8