Kim, welcome to the wonderful world of orchid growing. You should give the readers a little help by adding at least the state of the USA to your "my Page" details.
Anyway, I would suggest a Maudiae type Paphiopedilum.

welcome!
sounds like you have a really nice start with reblooming phals, good for you!

i am rather new too (two years now), so someone correct my advice if it is wrong

1. repotting needs to happen when the roots have out grown the pot. see if there are a lot of roots growing out of the pot. a plant that is not repotted may grow so many roots it becomes root bound--meaning it has knotted itself up, it is not easy to correct this once this has happened.
2. i recommend an oncidium named Sherry Baby, because it is so easy to grow and it blooms a lot of fragrant flowers. if your phals are happy there, i think the Sherry Baby would be too.
if your phals have been so happy, i would imagine a number of orchids would do well in the same conditions.

Thanks Arthurm...I have updated my page as well as added my Zone.

elvinwei, My original Orchid has little snake like roots (don't know proper name for them, sorry) that are growing out of the pot on all sides. Do orchids transplant well? Mine are in full bloom right now and I dont want to traumatize them. I have so many questions at this point that I should probably ask the local garden shop for som help :)

Phals transplant well, and should be repotted every one to two years. The medium breaks down over time and it suffocates the roots. Phals are epiphytes, meaning they like air on their roots. You can repot while in bloom without hurting the plant. Just pop it out and trim off black roots with a sterilized knife or shears( I hold mine in a lighter flame and then rub with alcohol). They don't like too big of pot so if it looks like itcould go back in the same pot, fill it with new media, leave some of the roots out in the air still. And done. Some folks would reccomend keeping it in shade for a bit after, but I live on the edge aliitle and put them right back where they were and I have never noticed any ill effects. I do want to add that you should not go clipper happy on the roots, Also you want to make the plant stable in the pot for awhile, don't let it be wobbly in the pot.

Thanks Kermit....You are right that the original material that was in the pot is almost gone. I will probably transplant this week end and then keep my fingers crossed.

Kim - Welcome to what may be the beginning of an orchid - um - "dependence." Others might use the word "addiction," but your innocent eyes must be protected.

And congratulations on your success w/ your orchids. It can be thrilling to make these magical beings so happy that they rebloom.

I've been in orchids about 3 years, have taken a potting class at one of the commercial growers,' and have repotted a boatload of Phals, many when in spike, bud, or flower. They've done fine.

Are your Phals in sphagnum moss or bark? Evidently, recent research has found that, long-term, Phals will thrive only in sphag, but other ingredients may need to be added for your environment.

One option would be to start another thread, asking people in and near your Zone how they pot their Phals and in what medium(s). Phals that have been sent here to Minnesota from growers in FL, NC, and TX have been in various media, and I almost lost the first plants until I repotted in straight sphag.

Or, you could call or e-mail a commercial grower in your Zone - or near it, and ask what medium they advise for home growers, which may be different from what works in their ideal greenhouse conditions.

As for another orchid, you could go on commercial growers' sites and look at hybrids (species can be more particular about their cultural conditions) that grow in conditions like yours. For that, you'll need to figure out what your temperature and humidity ranges are - Phals are more forgiving than lots of other orchids. An inexpensive maximum/minimum thermometer and hygrometer will give you that info easily. Also, figure out which direction(s) your light comes from, if you don't know already.

After that, you could call or e-mail a grower, describe your conditions, and ask what else would be happy there FOR A BEGINNER WHO'S BUYING THEIR 3rd ORCHID.

Hint: If they say an orchid needs "intermediate temperature conditions," or "warm," or "cool," or if they say it needs low, medium, or high light, or average humidity, keep repeating your temp and humidity ranges and light direction and ask if the orchid will grow in those specific conditions. Many of us have learned the hard way that one grower's "intermediate" temps and "low" light are another's cool temps and medium light.

Or, if that sounds like way too much effort, you could pick out something that may be happy with your Phals. A Paphiopedilum (Paph) hybrid would be a good possibility. You could look for one with sequential blooming for maximum length of flowering. Other Paphs can have just one flower that lasts 3-5 weeks and then are done till the next year.

Let us know what you decide. Have fun! Whitecati

Thanks for all the great advice, Whitecat :)...Both of my orchids came to me in clay pots that were packed with moss. The oldest of the two definitly needs help. It dries out too fast and only has 4 flowers on the spike (right term?). The other Phal I rescued from my mom who was doing her best to kill it. She liked my phal and so bought one for herself but just didn't take care of it. It hadn't flowered in a year and looked miserable so I orchid-napped it!!! It took a while but now it has flowered for the second time and has 9 of the most beautiful flowers!!!

I can see how it becomes addicting :) I will take your advice...by the way, is that how most of you find orchids...from commercial growers? I have noticed that most garden shops seem to carry only phals...

Hi, Kim,

You're welcome for the info. That was nice of you to rescue your mom's plant. You've done especially well, getting hers to rebloom. Congratulations.

Yes, most of my orchids come from commercial growers. You could Google for orchids in your state, in case you could visit in person. Otherwise, there are loads of good growers that sell online.

WARNING: Before you order from anyone, search the archives here to see what experiences people have had. There are a few rotten outfits out there that send sick plants, send the wrong plants, and then won't make it right. Some even yell and swear at you for mentioning the problem.

A grower's orchids are likely to be more expensive than those in Home Depot or a garden center. If you check out several sites or ask here, you can get an idea if prices are fair.

Another warning - looking at growers' online sites can send you right over the edge into full-blown orchid obsession. But hey, you could order genuine orchid pots and sphag at the same time. VBEG

Or, do you have a source for sphag and pots? One of the better garden centers or nurseries near you might carry them.

If you don't have super high humidity most of the year in your house, you can consider plastic pots instead of clay because the potting medium will dry more slowly. It could be that clay will be fine, once you get new moss in there. In Minnesota, the sphag in clay dries out so fast that I was watering twice as often, so everything's going into plastic.

Do you have a good orchid book that covers repotting Phals? If not, there are suggestions in the FAQs for orchid books - toward the bottom of the list.

If you don't have a book and want to do this this weekend...

After you bring the pots to the sink, handle one pot at a time, and wash your hands before handling the other pot, just in case there are pests or diseases lurking.

Gently pull the plant out of the pot to see if it's rootbound and will need a slightly larger pot. Always hold the plant by the base, where the leaves meet the roots. If it won't come out, run a knife around the inside. If it still won't come out, add tepid water to the sphag till it does.

If they're not rootbound, you can use the same pots. Disturb the sphag and roots as little as possible, in case the plant needs to go back in that pot until you can get another pot.

When looking at the roots, look for off-white, light brown, or light green roots, or roots with green tips. They're most likely the healthy ones. The ones that are brown, black, or squishy may be dead and will need to be cut off.

Unlike many houseplants, orchids don't automatically go in a larger pot each time. The bottom of the Phal leaves should be about an inch below the rim of the pot when it's repotted, so there's room to water without the water going over the sides. It's best to put a thin layer of sphag at the bottom of the pot so the roots aren't resting on the clay or plastic bottom, so allow for that.

If the healthy roots will fit back in the same pot without you having to cram them in there so hard that you're afraid you'll break them, then the pot size could be about right. :) Orchid roots like to feel snug in the pot, plus if there's too much extra room, the medium won't dry out fast enough, and you could have root rot.

Don't worry about aerial roots - roots that are growing out of the sphag. Phals just do that. You can leave them out of the sphag when you repot.

The pots will need to be cleaned, if the orchids can go back in them. Put the plants in SEPARATE bowls of tepid water so the roots are covered, washing your hands in between. If some are sticking up in the air, you can put a wet paper towel over them. It's okay if the leaves get wet, too. Just make sure to remove any water at the base of the leaves when you're all done.

Wash your hands in between plants.

One way to clean pots is to run them under hot water to get out any remaining sphag and then cover them in bleach and cold water for 30 minutes or so. Because I go for overkill, I use about 3/4 cup of bleach to a pot/bowl of cold water. Adding some dish detergent cuts the bleach smell, if it bothers you. If your plant is staked, throw the stake in there, too. You may need to flip it halfway through, if all of it won't submerge.

Ideally, the pots shouldn't touch each other in the water, so you may need two pots or bowls, or you can do them one at a time. Just be sure the orchid roots are wet in the meantime.

If you need new pots, kinda squeeze out the extra water from the sphag, repack it around the roots if you need to, and put the orchids back in their pots till you can find more. You can also soak up the excess water by wrapping the roots and sphag w/ paper towels.

Look for pots with more holes than houseplant pots usually have - for clay, there will be slits in the side, in addition to a hole in the bottom; for plastic, there will be bigger holes in the bottom, perhaps a raised "cone" in the bottom with more slits or holes for drainage, or even slits on the side. Again, stores near you may carry "orchid pots" in plastic and clay, which may be called azalea pots and are more shallow than regular pots.

If you get new pots, rinse them with hot water before potting. You can still sterilize the old pots later to repot MORE ORCHIDS. Heh heh.

If you're using the same pot, rinse it w/ real hot water after bleaching and then wash it with soap to get rid of the bleach fumes. Dry it off to make sure any fertilizer residue on the outside is gone because this can keep the clay from breathing. You can scour off the residue gently.

Before you open the bag of sphag, put it in a larger plastic bag, and then put that bag in another bag the same size or larger. If you handle the dry sphag inside those 2 bags as much as possible, esp. for the tearing it apart, it'll cut down on little pieces floating in the air, covering your house with sphag dust, and going up your nose for the next 3 days. Just kidding - it just seems that way.

Use your best guess about how much sphag it will take to repot the first plant. Put that amount in a bowl of tepid water. It should get sopping wet.

Repotting time is a good opportunity to wash the leaves. If they haven't been cleaned since you got them, or if they've been rinsed w/ water, you can wash the tops and undersides with milk on a paper towel or lemon juice on a paper towel. If you've cleaned the leaves like this before, you can just rub them with your fingers under tepid running water to get off the dust that accumulates. In general, the leaves need to be washed w/ tepid water once a month, once you've done the initial cleaning.

To cut off the bad roots, get a sharp pair of scissors and sterilize them in the flame of a gas stove. If you don't have a gas stove, some suggest cleaning in ethanol. This is important. If one of your plants has a pest or disease, unsterile scissors can spread it to your other plant. (Note - there are lots of different opinions on sterilization - even whether to do it at all. I'm being conservative here.)

Next, wash your hands, if you haven't already, and rinse old sphag off the roots under tepid running water. Cut off the dark brown, black, or squishy roots. Healthy roots will have dark brown, black, or squishy parts, too. Just cut them back to the healthy part. If you see little "strings" that are much thinner than the roots, cut them off. Exception: If a little string runs between 2 healthy parts, leave all of it. (Apologies for not knowing the technical terms.)

The trick I learned in the potting class was to take a small handful of wet sphag from a bowl of tepid water, squeeze out most of the water till it's damp and kinda fluffy but not close to dripping, and then put a large "plug" of sphag up under the roots where they meet the leaves. If you picture the roots in the pot, you want them to be surrounded by dampish sphag, so putting the plug on the "inside" will avoid a huge hole in the sphag. Hope that makes sense.

Then, squeeze out quite a bit more sphag, maybe 3 handfuls - more than you think you'll need for the rest of the plant. Hold the plant at the base of the leaves w/ a couple of fingers and hold the plug in place with the rest of your fingers. If you hold the plant on its side, gravity will help you out here. :)

The next step is to wrap the outside of the root mass with the dampish sphag. Often this can be done in 2 steps with a large handful of the sphag each time. Better to have too little sphag than too much - that drainage and drying thing. If you have 1/2" or 1" of sphag thickness around the outside of the plant, that's about right. 2" would be too much. Again, this is the fluffy sphag all by itself, not what presses flatter from the pressure of your hand.

The roots don't have to be perfectly wrapped, but be sure the plug's still in place before you put the whole thing down in the pot. You can always add more sphag around the sides. Try to get the plant in the middle of the pot, because Phals grow upwards from one growth, rather than creating new growths in the same pot - well, usually.

Once the plant's in the pot, poke around in the sphag gently with one finger to see where there are holes and fill those w/ sphag. When you're done, the plant shouldn't wobble back and forth in the pot but shouldn't have the sphag in there so tightly that it can't drain easily and air can't get to the roots. Yeah, yeah - hard to describe that last one.

Put the plant someplace where it will get reduced light. A couple of feet back from where it usually sits is ideal. Get a little piece of toilet paper, Kleenex, or paper towel and soak up any water at the base of the leaves. A lot of people will recommend leaving it here for a week WITHOUT WATERING. This will give the raw ends of the roots time to harden off, whereas watering could cause rot. Keeping the plant in reduced light will help it cope with the stress of repotting.

Clean the surface where the first plant and pot were, wash your hands, sterilize the scissors, and repeat for the other plant. Wash your hands when you're finished with that plant. Kick back, treat yourself to an adult beverage, if you're so inclined, and congratulate yourself.

Well, I do "go on," as we say in the South. I hope this is helpful.

Whitecat8

WOW...Who needs books LOL!!! Thanks for all the info, whitecat! Although I was really hoping to repot this weekend looks like that project is on hold. My Son is sick as a dog and I have spent my free time cleaning up....well....yucky stuff that happens when one is sick :( Pretty appropriate for Mother's Day I guess. My husband gave me my Mother's Day present early.....A NEW ORCHID....Ok it was another phal but it is beautiful and a new color to me so now I have three. How sweet...I guess he is paying attention after all :)

Well off to check on the kids...Will try my repotting adventure next week :)

Awww - too bad about the sick kid. I just got through repotting - mostly Phals in sphag, and all there was to clean up were sphag dust and bark.

Now that you have to postpone the repotting, maybe you'll have time to look for pots the same size as yours and one size larger.

As for the repotting suggestions, no doubt I left out some stuff, and there are multiple opinions about everything in orchids, and many of them work, so other sources may add, subtract, or contradict.

Hey, you got a Phal from hubby. Loads o' points to him for paying attention.

Happy Mother's Day -

Whitecat8

Wow, lots of info here....

Now - who can tell me what you do when your flowers are gone - I was given a phal (first orchid ever) and it's done flowering. Do I need to do anything *special* now?

The choice is up to you, You can cut down to a node just below where the first flower was on the spike or you can cut the spike off at the base. There is an FAQ which discusses where to cut. There are also some FAQS that discuss the conditions needed to make your Phalaenopsis flower again.

FAQ = Frequently asked questions. You can find them by clicking FAQ at the top of the discussion page.