Dividing & Repotting Zygopetalum Orchid... at night time-oops!

Hey, what's up garden friends? How's everybody doing? I hope you're good. I'm great And I thought the moon was in this shot, but it's behind the tree Alright, it is finally time time to repot my zygopetalum I've been avoiding this for like I don't know two years because as I mentioned before I've watched all the other videos and other People do this and then they die and but here's the deal This zygopetalum. Do you see this mess in here? If I don't repot it, it's going to die So I may as well just do it just suck it up and do it dogs barking at a squirrel in the trees Pardon him. Alright, so for starters, I'm gonna put on some gloves. I feel like there's creepy crawlies in there Let's go ahead and pop this open and see what the damage is like in there kind of loosen it up You guys see that does it show on camera? Yeah, this is Infested with ants they've been a major problem this year like they're taking over all of my plants It changes things up a little bit and how I'm going to approach this What I think I'm gonna go ahead and do is I'm actually gonna take it over to the garden and use the hose with a High pressure to blast all that stuff out of there all the ants all the larvae all the soil get everything out of it All right, I've gotten most of that soil removed So I'm gonna go ahead on in here with a clean sterile knife and cut out those old pseudobulbs and they'll spray down with some Peroxide put some cinnamon on there and get it repotted trying my best to get in here and loosen up the old roots There's some dead roots on the inside but everything on the outside is actually looking pretty alive and healthy So that's a good sign come in here with my knife and cut through those dead roots open things up a little bit I'm kind of open up a cavity in here where I can reach in pull that old soil out I'll go ahead and hose that out again. I'm going to lose some roots. There's just no other way around it Also, sorry if the audio is kind of wonky my mics the other direction for me right now looking at this It looks like this is the section in here that I'm gonna go ahead and cut out It's actually dividing up very nicely twisting out some of these older dead pseudobulbs that were in the middle and on the sides Oops, I'm gonna leave that actually All right, so I've got these divided in half I'm gonna go ahead and hose them off again Give them a spritz with some peroxide let that sit for a minute and then pop them up. Finally. There we go Got those roots all cleaned out the point of the peroxides reason I spray that on there is help kill off like bugs and critters and Heal infections and whatnot as you let it sit for about 10 or 15 minutes and hose it off really quick worse than casualties I lost a couple pseudobulbs, but that's all right, you know It's just the name of the game and I could have been more gentle. That's part of the problem there Okay, and for a potting mix This is really it's just a standard all-purpose potting soil that I have added a lot of lava rock to There's also a hefty amount of sand and perlite in there. I could add a little bit more perlite probably I might do that and That's pretty much it. I like using the lava rock over the orchid barks. It's not gonna decompose as quickly I've repotted others and it went just fine. But I just like I said, I'm paranoid. It's gonna die, but I'm doing it Anyway, so lava rock I'm gonna add a little bit more perlite and sand to that and it should be good to go Oh, but like I was saying the reason I like using lava rock is because it's not gonna break down and decompose as quickly Which can compact the soil It has a lot of pores and a lot of surface area which helps provide area for beneficial fungi and bacteria Just a lot of good stuff that helps the roots I'm trying to line this up so that the pseudobulbs are just a smidge above the surface of the pot Maybe like right at the surface All right, and there it is nothing too exciting I kind of breezed through it because the Sun just it set out of absolutely nowhere I say out of nowhere as if I didn't know that the Sun was going to set. Yes, it does that every day Yeah, I tried to get as many of the old pseudobulbs cut out of the middle as I could I didn't want to destroy it too terribly much Yes, there is of course a strong possibility that I may end up losing the flowers on this It's pretty much always in flowers. So I was just kind of like it, you know, whatever I got to do it I just I have to get this done I need to get it done while it's still decent enough to have these outside for several weeks because they're really gonna root into these Pots a lot faster outdoors with the day and the night shifts and the higher humidity and everything They still look pretty junky though. That's all right. The point of this was to hopefully improve that so we will see fingers crossed one of my real Objectives here is to just hope that the new growths that are in here the new pseudobulbs that are developing don't die That's what I really want to happen This division is a much more shabby than the other guy and see there's a lot more going on with the growth in this pot Yeah, that's all right. It'll catch up or it might just die We'll see but you don't know if you don't try All right, there it is not the most informative or helpful thing just cuz you know I'm a little bit iffy about how well this is going to do I do think that the swell mixture should work really well though It may even end up drying out a little bit too fast with these being in clay pots that are unglazed that more airflow in There which is great for the roots, but the moisture controls not so much. We will see also sorry about the lighting I actually think this looks kind of pretty to be honest, but I hope everybody's doing well I put all my social media down there below down in the description and the roots of the video can follow me and I'll follow You back it's a lot of fun Look at everybody's pictures seeing what everybody's doing their gardens and talking to everybody and speaking of talking to everybody Comment down below tips or tricks on repotting zygos. I've heard a lot of different methods watch a lot of different videos Read a lot of different things I think that this is what's going to work the best for me And if it does then I can go back and talk about what I did a little bit more thoroughly with the soil I don't want to be like hey, this is how you repot a zygopetalum and then just have it die That that doesn't work. I need to make sure that this works first. Don't forget to leave the video a thumbs up It helps so so much and I really appreciate every single one of those subscribe as well Upload multiple times a week Don't forget to hit that notification box If you don't YouTube doesn't tell you about new videos kind of defeats the point of subscribing a little bit, doesn't it? All right, as always everybody most importantly keep on growing