Mike - there is a relationship between pot size, plant size, and the physical characteristics of your soil. If you use a heavy, water retentive soil and a large pot, you can expect problems no matter how bright or perfect the light is, the temperature is, the nutritional program is. Roots begin to die very quickly in soils deprived of air. If you have a large mass of soil that is saturated, the plant may not be able to use it before some % of the roots die. This cyclic death & regeneration of roots is expensive to the plant. On the other hand, if you are using a soil that holds no, or very little perched water, you're almost unlimited in how large a pot you can use. If the soil holds NO perched water, you can safely plant the tiniest seedling in a 100 gallon container if you choose - with no worry for root rot caused by airless conditions. The plant also greatly appreciates the added aeration, and will reward you with more robust growth and better vitality, all else being equal. So you can see that as the soil improves in drainage and aeration, you are less limited in the choice of pot size. It's probably better not to think of larger soil masses as a superior stress buffer. The plant will eventually be subjected to the same stresses in a large pot as in a smaller container, though again, deeper containers will have a higher % of well-aerated soil when the soil is fully saturated. Buffering against cold is probably of no consideration, and buffering against heat can work for OR against you. Soil masses large enough to heat up slowly also cool slowly ..... Depth of planting doesn't have an impact on aeration. Roots will colonize all parts of a container that provides a favorable mix of air/water/nutrients. While there are good reasons not to bury the trees buttress roots, aeration isn't one of them. Larger pots DO postpone the incidence of encircling/girdling roots, but you need to be sure you're not trading one problem for another (over-potting and it's accompanying problems for girdling/encircling roots. Even if you can't see them, you WILL have problems related to incremental and cyclic root death when you overpot with heavy soils. Fast draining, well-aerated soils, as noted, reduce the potential for problems. Al

Rebecca, those orchids growers who have thousands of orchids once had one, so be wary. What is the hurry? New grower gets orchid and wants to repot it straight away just because are lots lots of roots visible. Lots of roots is a good sign! Maybe your orchid does need repotting, hard to say without a picture and without knowing what sort of growing conditions you are going to provide. In the interim, i suggest you seek out complete Phalaenopsis cultivation notes on the net that relate to climate zones 6 and 7. Also perhaps read some of the past threads about Phalaenopsis on this site. To find them just put Phalaenopsis in the search box on top of the discussions page.

You could get a bigger pot or plant them with the rest out in the garden. Crowding them in a small pot makes them not want to grow bigger because of the lack of space and nutrients.

Smiles! I just put a really fuzzy pic in another discussion. Hope it gets some giggles too! Mechanical = something that happened to it, like getting bent, scratched, something chewed on it a long time ago... something other than a virus, disease, current/ongoing pest problem. When leaves get beat-up looking, they are unable to heal. If you don't like their appearance, you can cut them off at the soil level, (and use them to make new plants.) There are also pics of propagating in water around this forum if you do a search...