Repotting Stenoglottis

We love our Stenoglottis species and have grown them successfully for thirty years. They are strongly seasonal plants and respond well to be repotted during the winter dry season. We have been asked a number of times about our repotting methods and so this page will show what we are doing this winter.

Towards the end of flowering we keep plants much dryer than in the growing season and the old leaves gradulaly die back. For Stenoglotting woddii this is in September, for Stenoglottis fimbriata it is in November, and for Stenoglottis longifolia this is in December or January.

The photo shows some of our Stenoglottis woodii plants in November, after flowering and keeping dryish for a couple of months. There are aome tired looking old leaves, dead flower spikes and signs of new shoots.

Knocking a plant out of its pot reveals the lovely roots from last year that act like tubers for the new growths

Cleaning off some of the bark compost shows that the new shoots are coming from separate roots and these can be split apart. The photo shows that this one plant can be divided into four.

Each piece can then be potted into a fresh pot of bark compost. This will be kept slightly damp for the next month or so until growth is well under way. (slightly damp means dribbling a little water around the edge of the pot a couple of times a week)

Once growth is well away in spring we will water plants very heavilly all summer - watering most days, and feeding at 500 micro-seimens conductivity to grow the strong growths that flower well in the Summer and Autumn

The photos show the three species in order of flowering S.woodii flowering in July, S.fimbriata in October and S.longifolia in November - three wonderful orchids