Making the workplace ergonomically correct for orchids

You may remember that Wax's and my orchid journey (buying seven orchids in less than a month) started because there's an orchid at work, an archetypal large white phalaenopsis, that I'm responsible for, and I got worried about it in early August when it dropped all its blooms.

I fell into a rabbit hole of research and learned that it showed signs of dehydration because it was root bound: there wasn't enough room for all the roots to get air and water in the pot. (I think it lost the blooms, unrelatedly, from shock after the heatwave at the beginning of August. Orchids don't like sudden temperature changes and our work environment isn't air conditioned or ventilated.)

So I got it a pot one size bigger, 15 cm to its former 12. And it wouldn't fit in the pot! I had to order a 17 cm pot for it, and it sat in the medium one with several inches of root sticking out in the meanwhile. Today I finally put it in the bigger pot, and it fit perfectly! It only broke off a couple of little pieces of root in the transfer.




Work orchid after being cut out of its 12 cm pot with a simply implausible amount of roots; soaking in an orchid fertilizer bath and oozing out of the 15 cm pot; happily snug in the new 17 cm pot (inside a 19 cm ceramic one); in June with a loaded flower spike; on the drainboard in its new pot, beside the original outer pot (13 cm?) and the new one for scale