Special Little Phalaenopsis

This little lady was an unexpected treasure.....

when I found her in the nursery at Norman's Orchids. I was talking to Norman or his brother, it was my first time so I wasn't quite sure, when I spotted the most adorable little blossoms among the hobbyist section of their greenhouse. There must have been a dozen flowering plants in this particular section with bursts of tiny lavender colors blooms. My heart was set on these babies and when I asked Norman about them, he was impressed. He was also a fan of these phals and went so far as to help me pick one, since I told him I was a beginner at the orchid hobby.

He went through looking at each plant, and while I was looking at the pretty blooms, he was looking for something specific. He picked up my little Baby Blue and held her out to me. When I asked why this particular one, he turned the pot around to show me. The orchid, which already had two flower spikes, also had a basal keiki growing from the side! He told me I was only being charged for the one plant so I should make it count and I took her right then and there.

So I took her home and kept her in the sphagnum moss she had come with but I was nervous. I was only used to bark chips up until this point and sphagnum moss didn't seem like a good thing despite being told not to repot until spring. I was so unsure about how to water her and completely unfamiliar with sphagnum moss as a medium that I decided to be safe rather than sorry and let her dry out a little before rewatering. This in turn led her to drop her blooms and stale the spikes.

From there I started getting more nervous until I finally did the big switch to S/H. Her roots were in not the best shape as the moss had been packed in the center and those roots just rotted away. The first repot didn't go well as her leftover roots also began to mold and decompose and her bottom leaves began to yellow.

Now that I've done the second repot, things are still going smooth after 1 week. There has been spot molding on the top of some plants but I just spray with alcohol or hydro/perox to kill it. I'll do a weekly flush to help keep the decomp in the pots down as much as possible and see how things go from there. I'm hoping not to lose any more roots but they are hardy plants from what I understand. I'll be watching my Tzu Chiang Sapphire closely to make sure the mother and keiki are doing okay. Hopefully when she establishes herself, I'll have a really beautiful display when she decides to spike since I have no plans to remove the keiki.