Like many gardeners, I do admire orchids. I picked up this plant a few years ago. It's done well for me and I love it when it blooms! This year for the first time ever, it has produced two prolifs/babies. How do I separate these babies from the mother plant. The roots have really gotten long on them, so I may have waited too long to decide to separate them. It will be a challenge potting them up with those long roots.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I am thrilled that I will now have more orchids! How long does it take before the "babies" will bloom?

Baby Orchid #1:



Baby Orchid #2:



Mother Orchid with 2 baby plants still attached to her:

Wow, those are nice size babies, Becky! In the orchid world we call those 'keikis' which is a Hawaiian word for baby.

I'd suggest instead of potting them up, you could just mount them on a piece of wood. They seem to be doing so well just waving around in the air there, really there is no need to bury the roots. Orchids are epiphytes, well designed to collect water and nutrients from the air, so whatever great care you've given those plants, just keep on with it. You'll notice that when you water or it rains, those roots turn from white to green, as they absorb the water.

Here are pictures of a couple of my mounted orchids. The important thing with a Phal like yours is to make sure the crown of the plant is on a slant or pointed downwards so that water never sits in the cup of the leaves. People tend to want to mount or pot them standing straight up and this can lead to crown rot in a spell of wet weather.

You don't need to cover up the roots. They will find their way to the mount and attach themselves. Just find a sturdy piece of bark or rough wood, put on a little cushion of coco fiber (like the stuff used for hanging basket liners, only pulled apart so it's airy) and tie the keikis onto the wood firmly so they won't wobble around. I used strips of bird netting to tie these on. Other people use rope, wire, panty hose, even zip ties. After about a year, the plant will be well attached, and you can remove the tie material if it's unsightly. I use slabs of cork as a mounting.

How wonderful! Healthy keikies.
I would gently water the roots to make them pliable, so they don't break when you manipulate them. I would just cut the whole plantlet off the stem and pot them into small Orchid bark. Or - if you like, you could pot one up and mount the other.

We overlapped and I like your response much better than mine, Elaine!! 👍

The idea of potting one and mounting the other is good, too. I was just going to come back and say if they were mine, I'd mount both those little ones on the same mount. They might make a nice specimen plant in a few years.

I am migrating towards mounting my Phals here, frankly. The ones I have in pots seem to all be climbing out and putting roots up into the air, so I think with our high humidity and heat, they like their roots more exposed. Plus of course I do spray them nearly every day if it doesn't rain, so they don't dry out too much.

Becky, I should have said if your orchid lives outdoors I'd go with mounting rather than a pot, but if it's an indoor plant, a pot might be better. You'd not have to water/mist so often. Mine are all outdoors.

Elaine and Ursula - Thank you for your reply. I did a little online research and found a few helpful sites and a video. It was pretty much as you said to just cut the keiki from the mother plant. BTW - I like that term, too! It even sounds like a word from Hawaii.

All of my orchids are under a roof on my screen porch. They are on a shelving rack or lined up in a wicker plant shelf. I have no place to hang them if they were mounted. Squirrels would probably destroy them as well if they were outside. So all of mine are potted up and inside the screen porch. I cut the two keikis off the mother plant and potted them up in bark and orchid moss, watered and fertilized them, and set them on the shelving unit (right back where they were). And I separated some other orchids and potted them all up. I now have double the number of orchids after splitting them all up and repotting each one. It's a good thing I did, as all of them were root-bound in their pots and had a lot of dead roots that needed to be trimmed away.

Before separation:



After separating the keikis from the mother plant:



These are some of the other orchids that I divided and repotted. They all look much happier being repotted:

All are looking good, Becky. It is time to do some trading now that you have duplicate plants.

Good job, Becky!! Looks great!

Ursula - Thank you!

Ken - I am not one to do trading because of where I live. Florida harbors so many bugs, diseases, and other issues concerning plants ... that I don't want to take the chance of passing something in my plants on to someone else's healthy garden and plants. It is a constant battle here in FL to keep my plants healthy. But it is a nice thought to share or trade. I will just enjoy a bigger display of the same plants/flowers instead.