Orchid Question! First time owning an Orchid and one of ...
Orchid Question!
First time owning an Orchid and one of her leaves is Turing yellow. What should I do? Did I do something wrong to cause this? #orchid
First time owning an Orchid and one of her leaves is Turing yellow. What should I do? Did I do something wrong to cause this? #orchid
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Because that’s happening to a middle leaf instead of the bottom-most leaf, it is abnormal/concerning. A few possibilities that come to mind are you’re overwatering it (that medium looks pretty wet, and overwatering can quickly open it up to bacterial/fungal infection), some water got trapped in the base of that leaf and it started dying off, the leaf was physically damaged (like yanked and the base of it where it attaches started to crack), or maybe a nutrient deficiency. With regard to the leaf itself, leave it where it is for now, because the orchid is still reabsorbing nutrients from it (generally you almost always want to let a leaf fall off on its own).
Overwatering and the problems that arise from it would be my first thought though. Give the pot a sniff — does it smell wet or musty? If that medium is wet or there is a smell, pull it from the pot and get it in front of a fan for a bit, make sure nothing looks like it’s rotting.
Overwatering and the problems that arise from it would be my first thought though. Give the pot a sniff — does it smell wet or musty? If that medium is wet or there is a smell, pull it from the pot and get it in front of a fan for a bit, make sure nothing looks like it’s rotting.
@Succulent_Soul the key to killing them is overwatering; your average grocery store phal can survive a long time with no water and a little humidity (like well over a month), but if they get too much water it will quickly go into rapid decline. While not totally ideal (meaning repot is good, at the very least to reduce likelihood of pests hitching a ride) they can definitely stay alive in their initial medium (which should virtually always be some sort of peat or sphagnum moss) for years, but because that medium is so moisture-retentive you need to be diligent about limiting its water to something like 1-4 Tbsp/week depending on its size… this is why the ice cube method is so successful for novice orchid owners — it’s an easy way to ensure people limit water to a few Tbsp. With the physics of thermodynamics, ice watering won’t hurt the plant as long as it is not making direct physical contact with it (so, not touching its leaves or roots), the slow drip of melting water gives it more time to absorb the water, and the small to moderate short-term temp drop ice causes to the air and medium is not different than what the plant experiences in nature… it can accumulate salts easier though, so you will want to flush the roots with distilled water during repotting; distilled water has no dissolved minerals or ions, so it will chemically attract stuff like salts or metals and dissolve (basically yank them apart for their ions) until it reaches chemical equilibrium.
I personally don’t water with ice (it would not make watering easier for me), but I’ve definitely tested it out multiple times over the past 20 years and taken the time to read the research on it… if you haven’t been able to keep an orchid alive long-term, ignore the people claiming it’s bad (they’re just repeating what they heard from someone else who never tried it either) and give it a shot… you’ll likely find that it thrives.
I personally don’t water with ice (it would not make watering easier for me), but I’ve definitely tested it out multiple times over the past 20 years and taken the time to read the research on it… if you haven’t been able to keep an orchid alive long-term, ignore the people claiming it’s bad (they’re just repeating what they heard from someone else who never tried it either) and give it a shot… you’ll likely find that it thrives.
@smushface thank you. My orchid did survive for a long time in the store soil but eventually started dying and I didn’t know what to do from there. I’ve never been able to keep one alive.
@Succulent_Soul at a certain point they do need repotting and fertilization, it’s just the biggest killer is typically overwatering.
Thank you! I am considering trying another orchid. I’ll look to you for advice on the future.