Who knows about Orchids?

Question

My Phalaenopsis is 1 year old and has 2 plantlets growing on the old flowering stems. They have what may be air-roots,I'm not sure.Question can they be planted? Or leave them be?
It is my first orchid and traveled with me in a camper to Seattle and spent the summer on a fishing-trawler and sems to be happy. Exept it had a small round black spot on one leafe when purchaised it made numerous spots over the whole leafe and I cut it off.Now it has a much later a2nd leafe has a little black spot.What could cause this? I water it once a week with orchid foodmix. It's otherwise healthy. Thank you for any help with this.Es

Answer 1

David is right about the spots. They are a fungus or virus on the plant. You should remove any leaves that have spots on them like that to prevent it from spreading to the rest of the plant. You might check with a place that sells orchids on how to more effectively combat it. On thing to be careful of is to not pour any water on the leaves when you water it, doing so can tend to kill that leaf.

As for the airbound roots, those are new plants. If you leave them on the original orchid, spritz them with water from a hair sprayer bottle. The plant on top does not get nutrition from the plant it is growing on top of but rather the air roots. That is why the air roots need spritzed with water. If you want, you can plant the plants with the air roots in an orchid soil mix that you can get at almost any plant store. I've even seen Walmart carry it. The new plants should take off on their own. It will take about 2-3 years though before they start producing any flowers.

I water mine once a week also. But I water mine by dunking the pot in water up to the base of the plant, then letting the pot soak for about half a minute or so then pulling it out and letting it completely drain. This avoids getting water on the leaves and helps avoid getting water down into the cracks at the base of the plant leave stalks. Water down in those can rot out the leaves and kill that stalk. The pot dunking method was a simple method taught to me by one orchid place. Although another orchid place I went to watered theirs differently, the method seems to work great for me.

Answer 2

The black spots showing up is the fungus/virus that lives in orchids... All orchids have some sort of a virus living in them, it won't totally kill the plant tor then it won't have a host to live on.

As far as the plantlets go.. Let them go for now until the roots get larger then try putting them in peat moss and see if they grow.

Answer 3

the experts at--

http://www.ehow.com/Search.aspx?s=grow+orchids&Options=
Good luck!