White leaf tips/streaks on new phrag La Vintaine

[Morja]

I impulse ordered this phrag from Ebay in the middle of Idaho winter, and it was shipped USPS (I know better! FedEx only for my town!), so after a nail biting extra half day rattling around in its box getting to me it arrived. It was sent potted in POTTING SOIL of all things. Many dead roots, but also many live ones and some new roots tips and 3 new growths starting, so I think it could be okay.
I have a couple of questions, but my main question is, what is the white streaking on this leaf tip? If a nutrient deficiency (a new leaf is also looking pale), what do you think it needs? Or is it cold damage from its chilly extra half day after the heat pack cooled off?

It's absorbing a Kelpak watering now, but I will fertilize it as normal shortly.

My other question is if you think I will see root die back from the change from deathly potting soil to a seedling bark/perlite mix layered with some small/medium rocks (because I was at the end of my bag of mix...)?



Bonus picture of living roots (after a trim up) during Kelpak soak yesterday.

 

[IvoPhal]

Potting soil is a really nice idea, imaginative
I would grow it like that!

 

[Morja]

Potting soil is a really nice idea, imaginative
I would grow it like that!

I can't tell if you're being serious

 

[IvoPhal]

Sorry, for spamming but I also had some “nice” surprises from eBay. ….

 

[Morja]

Sorry, for spamming but I also had some “nice” surprises from eBay. ….

Haha it's fine. Same. I really need to stop ordering from people I haven't already heard excellent things about.

 

[IvoPhal]

Yep, that’s my conclusion too.
The plant is fine according my humble opinion, so many roots. Seriously I received rootless or sick (fusarium) plants.

 

[Ray]

My take: grow it well, as you know how, and don’t worry about the streaking unless it spreads or deteriorates. It’ll probably just grow out of it.

 

[big923cattleya]

I agree with Ray. Give it a chance to “grow clear of these issues”.
I order several plants a year on e-bay. But you are correct, get to know which vendors provide great plants. It takes time!
I am assuming that your winter weather is more extreme than mine is in Detroit. Having said that, my 2 recent purchases WERE AGAINST MY BETTER JUDGEMENT. However, the results were quite different.
One order came in from California with a $4 heat pack. They were wrapped beautifully but the heat pack likely led to condensation build up. Cold weather plus a heat pack might have caused it. The packing material seemed soaked. I opened the package right away. 3 plants were fine, one suffered a little damaged to the oldest growth. It is fine now.
The other three plants in a separate shipment arrived with cold damage, brown blotches on every leaf. Those have stabilized and seem fine. Shipment came out of the Tennessee river valley. On the way they may have encountered temperatures in the mid teens. But I know better, I should not have ordered!!! As tempting as it is, I SHOULD NOT ORDER FROM 11/15 until 3/15. That is my feeling about it and I should have stuck to that!! Yes, the plants are probably okay but just as easily, they could be dead.

I do get to travel around to judge at orchid shows in the Great Lakes Area. I should just be patient and buy a few plants at a show and from shows only. No mail orders!!!
With a show in late January, three in February and three in March, that should be opportunity enough for this impatient guy to purchase plants at a proper time.

 

[Morja]

Thank you for the input! It didn't seem like a disease so I'm not i early worried about it, but you're right, I'll just grow it out and it should be fine.

 

[Morja]

I agree with Ray. Give it a chance to “grow clear of these issues”.
I order several plants a year on e-bay. But you are correct, get to know which vendors provide great plants. It takes time!
I am assuming that your winter weather is more extreme than mine is in Detroit. Having said that, my 2 recent purchases WERE AGAINST MY BETTER JUDGEMENT. However, the results were quite different.
One order came in from California with a $4 heat pack. They were wrapped beautifully but the heat pack likely led to condensation build up. Cold weather plus a heat pack might have caused it. The packing material seemed soaked. I opened the package right away. 3 plants were fine, one suffered a little damaged to the oldest growth. It is fine now.
The other three plants in a separate shipment arrived with cold damage, brown blotches on every leaf. Those have stabilized and seem fine. Shipment came out of the Tennessee river valley. On the way they may have encountered temperatures in the mid teens. But I know better, I should not have ordered!!! As tempting as it is, I SHOULD NOT ORDER FROM 11/15 until 3/15. That is my feeling about it and I should have stuck to that!! Yes, the plants are probably okay but just as easily, they could be dead.

I do get to travel around to judge at orchid shows in the Great Lakes Area. I should just be patient and buy a few plants at a show and from shows only. No mail orders!!!
With a show in late January, three in February and three in March, that should be opportunity enough for this impatient guy to purchase plants at a proper time.

Hahaha, I'm glad I'm not the only one having done this. It's quite extreme where I am and I had told myself NO mail plants this winter! But here we are. I'm glad yours made it and mine too.

 

[Morja]

Update, the seller clarified with me via an email conversation that it was not in fact potting soil, but a special blend including ground coconut and other nutrients, and that their orchids love it and it cuts down on watering.
Okay. Tell that to the dead roots!
But also, I am but an orchid world babe. Maybe this is an actual practice that some people love.
Regardless I'll just grow it and it'll be fine. Haha.

 

[big923cattleya]

What works for one person does not work for everyone. I look at it as ‘suggestions’.
Just set up an experiment. If all of your collection, 20, 50, 100 orchids are in basically the same mix, then try a Phrag., a Cattleya and an Oncidium in a newly suggested mix. Give it a year. See how they react, how they flower, look at roots in a year and then re-evaluate. I think that should tell you whether or not that mix will work for you.
But if you pop orchids in and out of a mix every few months, can you really say yes, or no, that that mix is working. Time and patience will tell.

 

[mrhappyrotter]

I was going to mention that the "soil" could be peat or coco-peat based because it's easy to confuse with regular potting soil, especially if you're not already aware of it. I don't use the stuff for my Phrags, but many growers and vendors have great success with it. Plenty of orchids, even epiphytes like Phalaenopsis, can be successfully grown in it.

I can't say if the cocopeat contributed to the dead roots. However, I've grown in a wide variety of different mixes over the years, and dead roots happen regardless of the media. They are most common in Phrags that I did not water consistently (ex: I let the mix dry out too much then resumed regular watering) and those that I did not repot frequently enough. Also, the roots of old growths eventually die off just like the leaves, though the roots do tend to have a longer lifespan than the leaves.

Either way, most Phrags are root growing machines when they are happy, and the remaining roots post clean-up on your plant look to be in good shape, so I'm sure it will do well. It's definitely possible that more of these existing roots will die after you repot and move to a different mix, but it shouldn't be a problem and the plant will rapidly (by orchid standards) replace the ones that don't make it.

As for the white tips on the leaves, I have one Phrag that does this consistently. It gets the same treatment as all my other Phrags, so I'm not sure that it's a cultural or nutritional thing (though it could be). It doesn't seem to affect the plant's vigor or floriferouness. The only thing I can correlate with this phenomenon is that the plant only started doing this after I did a particularly heavy treatment with Physan many years ago.

 

[Morja]

I was going to mention that the "soil" could be peat or coco-peat based because it's easy to confuse with regular potting soil, especially if you're not already aware of it. I don't use the stuff for my Phrags, but many growers and vendors have great success with it. Plenty of orchids, even epiphytes like Phalaenopsis, can be successfully grown in it.

I can't say if the cocopeat contributed to the dead roots. However, I've grown in a wide variety of different mixes over the years, and dead roots happen regardless of the media. They are most common in Phrags that I did not water consistently (ex: I let the mix dry out too much then resumed regular watering) and those that I did not repot frequently enough. Also, the roots of old growths eventually die off just like the leaves, though the roots do tend to have a longer lifespan than the leaves.

Either way, most Phrags are root growing machines when they are happy, and the remaining roots post clean-up on your plant look to be in good shape, so I'm sure it will do well. It's definitely possible that more of these existing roots will die after you repot and move to a different mix, but it shouldn't be a problem and the plant will rapidly (by orchid standards) replace the ones that don't make it.

As for the white tips on the leaves, I have one Phrag that does this consistently. It gets the same treatment as all my other Phrags, so I'm not sure that it's a cultural or nutritional thing (though it could be). It doesn't seem to affect the plant's vigor or floriferouness. The only thing I can correlate with this phenomenon is that the plant only started doing this after I did a particularly heavy treatment with Physan many years ago.

Thank you!! Good info all around. I can't imagine growing an epiphyte in this stuff in my own conditions that tend to run cool. I'm sure some people can do it as you say though!


Bits of dead roots left behind in the medium before I started trimming the still attached dead bits off.
It's true that some die off is expected I suppose. It just seemed like a lot, and while the plant is mature my impression was it is still unbloomed and I don't think it's old enough to have old dead growths in its history. But maybe! That would be a good explanation and I will certainly keep it in mind for future plants.

I love that phrags are root machines!

 

[gonewild]

Thank you!! Good info all around. I can't imagine growing an epiphyte in this stuff in my own conditions that tend to run cool. I'm sure some people can do it as you say though!
View attachment 52071
View attachment 52072

If you asked me to describe the worst mix for growing orchids that's it.

 

[littlefrog]

I have several phrags in promix hp. Basically just a peat mix with extra perlite. 1 gallon and 2 gallon pots.

Seems to work... Absolutely nothing magically deadly about peat or coir, it is just another substrate. My temp in the barn was 65F yesterday afternoon at shoulder height, most of the phrags are a few inches off the floor so probably 60F.