Repotting an overdue sarcochilus

The sarcochilus shown above is well overdue for repotting. It's been in the same pot for many years so many of the older roots are probably dead and the older growths are sitting up a bit out of the mix.
The experts tell me that autumn is the time to repot these orchids (March here in Victoria) so I'm going to get to it.

 

This is the orchid out of the pot.  Note the brown roots. Many of these will be soft and flatten out when gently squeezed so they should be removed from the plant. All old potting mix should also be removed.
With orchids that have not been seen to for many years I usually find that the roots and mix in the middle has completely broken down.  This makes it easy to push the fingers up into the centre from underneath and tease out the roots that way.
The results of doing that in this case can be seen below.

  

 

Here we see most of the old mix removed and many of the old soft roots. The stringy centre part of the root many be left on or removed. I find sometimes that it can help to hold the plant in the new mix, particularly if there are not many good roots left on the plant.
There are some roots still to remove (lower right corner of the picture for example) and more old mix to remove also.

  
 

Here we see the plant ready to pot into the 4" (100mm) pot shown.
I'm holding the pieces together as I want to put them all back into the pot together. The alternative would be to pot them up individually into 3" (75mm) squat pots.
Note that the remaining roots are white to light brown (and firm).
I will hold them together with the base of the plants level with the top of the pot and fill in with a mix consisting of 10mm chunks of bark plus similar size pieces of Absorbastone. (around 20%)
To distribute the mix down and around the roots I pick up plant and pot together with both hands and shake. I do this 2-3 times as I fill in the mix.

  
 


Here I am pushing the two halves of the plant apart a little to get some mix in the middle and as I type this info I have realised two things.

  1. The plant should have been a little deeper in the pot. This can be seen from the growth in the middle at the back. The brown remains of the old leaves at the bottom, just in front of the piece of stone, is where the new roots will come from.

  2. There is scale on the plant. The small brown circular lump at the base of the leaf on the left is adult scale.
    I have sprayed regularly with a mix of white oil and pyrethrum so hopefully it's a dead adult scale. The white oil seals the edges of the brown cover and suffocates the scale underneath.

  
 

The finished plant.

Still looking a little untidy particularly with the marks on the older leaves but the lower ones will fall off as the year progresses and the new leaves grow nice and clean and green. The fact that some of the lower leaves fall off as the new ones grow on top is another reason why I should have planted it a little lower in the pot. (Next year perhaps)

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