How to Repot An Orchid Successfully

Learn how to repot an orchid correctly for best growth and bloom.

Our printable guide and video show you all the necessary steps and discusses the proper potting mix, watering and pots orchids need to thrive.

See our printable Orchid Care Guide to keep your orchids well maintained, happy and blooming after repotting.

When to Repot Orchids:

According to the American Orchid Society orchids need repotting when the orchid pot exhausts the potting soil nutrients and/or the orchid has outgrown its pot. You’ll see roots growing over the side of the pot.

Good quality orchid potting mix will support an orchid about two years before breaking down.

If you have a transparent plastic pot you can see the roots of the orchid. As you can see pictured below some of these roots are starting to grow up over the pot top.

This is the original pot for this orchid at two years old.

This orchid is still in pretty good shape. However, some of the roots were rotting due to poor watering practices. The potting mix is old and needs replacing.

Repotting a healthy orchid is very simple and will have good results. This Phalaenopsis Orchid sat in this tiny pot for two years.

Purchase Orchid Potting Supplies on Etsy

Fortunately, It was planted in a bark based potting medium rather than moss. Moss tends to cause root rot in orchids since it does not allow the roots adequate ventilation.

You can successfully grow an orchid in moss but not easily. it’s critical NOT to over water an orchid. Moss holds a lot of water and does not allow air flow around the orchids roots.

If you have an orchid potted in a heavy sphagnum moss mix we suggest you pot it into a good bark Orchid potting media.

We repotted this phalaenopsis with the blooms on since some of the roots were stressed.

But the blooms, now three months old and still lovely, were so pretty and we didn’t want to lose them if possible.

Wait for the blooms to fall off before repotting an orchid. Normally you repot in a rest period between blooming.

We took the chance of losing the blooms. The blooms are still beautiful and fresh looking a full month after our repot.

We don’t recommend you repot with the blooms on. Unless you feel, as we did, the orchid plant is stressed and needs a new pot right now. You may lose your blooms prematurely if the plant is stressed further in the repotting process.

70 percent of Orchids are epiphytes like this moth orchid. These types of orchids are really good at surviving with little to no soil since they climb trees in the wild and live off the soil composted into the nooks and crannies of the tree bark.

It is important to reproduce the natural environment as much as possible in the new pot.

Epiphytes Orchids absorb a good deal of water out of the humidity in the air. Orchid roots are designed to grow with lots of air around them.

Printable Guide: How to Repot An Orchid Plant

This is a complete step by step instruction list of how to pot an orchid in a new pot. If you print out this guide the pictures will not print. That is to save you paper and ink.

At the bottom of this guide is our demonstration video on how to pot an orchid in a new pot. Please comment below to ask your questions or give us feed back. We love to plant chat.