Thanks for your comments and since it's working great, I have intention of fixing it. What prompted me to do this post was the Xmas plant I brought home from our annual Xmas party. It's a Pot Red Crab 'Kuau Miau' AM/AOS from Kawamoto. It's in a 4" pot with bark and has a bunch of roots outside the pot. The roots took a major beating from the travel but it will reform them since it's on that course. Point is that repotting is only essential to plants that require the inside of the pot for survival. If there are no roots outside the pot and the inside is unhealthy, you have a problem. If on the other hand there is a plethora of roots outside the pot, the plant no longer needs a healthy interior of the pot and will grow quite nicely with the outside roots. This plat is in healthy new bark yet it has lots of outside roots. I plan to just put it in a empty larger pot and never repot it or replace the bark. End of story. 27 years from now it may well look like the Daffodil and get there with a minimum of work other than proper light, temp, water and nutrient. I make a big point of this when I give my Orchids 101 lectures at our show. Give them good conditions and otherwise let them do their thing. Nick

"The bigger the pot the bigger the plant isn't necessarily true", but probably is true in far more cases than it's untrue. How large a plant can get in a given pot depends more on how roots are managed than how large the pot is. Also, the bigger the pot (you bump it to), the greater the potential for over-potting, which is something you probably should avoid going into winter. I wouldn't "repot" until mid to late June. While you can pot up at nearly any time, as long as you're reasonable in your soil choice and pot size, there are still better times than others to pot up. Those times are the same times it's best to repot, and the reasons are similar. Potting up in June is less risky because the plant will be in the most robust part of the growth cycle, which means roots will colonize the new soil faster than any other segment of the growth cycle, which is an advantage for the plant. That said, repotting is much to be preferred over potting up ....... as long as the timing is appropriate. One practice eliminates all limitations associated with root congestion, the other practice ensures the limitations remain a part of the plant's existence until such time that you actually reach into the root mass with your hands/tools and correct the condition. Al

I only repot newly purchased orchids if the pot size is too small/ too big, growing media/type of pot isn't ideal for my growing conditions or the growing media looks as if it has broken down. I sometimes will also take a new orchid out of it's pot just to elongate drainage holes,or make additional ones then I just plop it back into the same pot if all else is fine. Otherwise I leave it happily undisturbed.

Try using a "tell" to tell you when it's time to water: Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al