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

I already do use T8 for about 80% of my plant room. The extra light yeah is a problem. I try to either place my other gesnariads or place the coleus there. Other shelves I have sheets of paper taped over them to diffuse the lights. There are a few remaining T12s, but they are a bit limited supply. I used to get them much cheaper than the T8, but now it isn't so. They are being phased out. The coleus are a few NOID's (though I suspect Twist and Twirl is one (see it grown in the conservatory where I got the plant as a door prize some years ago. And one variety I've had in some form or another since 1995. Most of the newest coleus I have right now are from seed, exhibition mix, and carefree. Those are going outside in the little front shade garden by the apartment building. I've yet to see mealybugs int he coleus. I suspect I got them from sale plants in a show a year ago. I was slow removing my show plants out of the bins, so everyone who shared that bin got them eventually. Ugh. Overall the infestation seems spotty. Some have them and some don't, because I do use systemic granules in the soil. The ones that missed treatment or have been in the same pot for a number of years and not been treated recently seem to have them. The recently repotted or treated don't. And ones dried up and sans roots, I notice the mealies don't like either. I find them on the main trunk under the soil. Very easy to treat, but harder for the plant to survive post treatment. (I tend to be slow repotting, so they might rot in the water/insecticide solution I hold them in before I have a block of time to repot. Soil: Coconut coir seems to work well with wicking. It retains more moisture than peat but compacts more. I have to use either more perlite or orchid mix to compensate and allow for more air. I also rinse it well to reduce any salt in it. I also mix in soil moist. I've heard that stuff is not ideal in wick mixtures, but under high heat, I notice it seems to be needed. I had one sale plant using yarn (not cotton based I guess?). That one works. I may have to get over to a fabric store and try that over the nylon cord. This post was edited by fieldofflowers on Tue, Apr 22, 14 at 19:41

Wow, that's very interesting John. My Meyer lemons turn so yellow, they start to turn orangish yellow if I leave them on the tree too long. I don't think we always have that much temp variation during the day - 30 degrees - as we're pretty close to the coast. Like today, for instance. Highs 69, lows 57. All my lemons, Meyer and either Eureka or Ponderosa (determination is still not made), yellow up really well for me. I might get that sort of temp variation in the winter, but not so much spring/fall and even summer. And why is the mango a clue?? Patty S.

Yes, you will probably be in a foothill climate type situation compared to closer in - you might want to look at Sunset Publishing Sunset Climate Zone maps to see if they have you in Sunset 4 instead of 5. These two Sunset Climate Zones correspond pretty well to USDA 8a and 8b Hardiness Zones respectively in how they are mapped. One convention is that at this latitude if you can see the Sound from your place you are in the banana belt and if you are out there some ways you are in a "cold" garden - there is even a collection just east of Lynnwood that supposedly gets down to something like 0F during cold winters. To some extent there is a pattern of the lows dropping by 1 degree F for each mile you go east - but this is all variable, one enthusiast garden that was on a hill north of Kent - yet apparently didn't get any colder than Seattle - featured Seattle style plants like Chilean fire tree and eucalyptus. Apart from influence of differing air drainage patterns there is also the effect of inaccurate thermometers on what conditions gardeners report for different locations! In this region pomegranate will tend to be a banana belt item, not coming through single digit winters very well.