Step 1. Invite a smoking hot female model over to pose with your orchids while you take photographs for this article.

Step 2. Remove the overgrown plant from its pot. Shake out the old compost, or potting soil, and examine the roots.

Step 3. Use a sharp tool to cut out the dead or infected roots. Healthy orchid roots are brownish white in color and feel solid. Bad roots are black and mushy. Many orchid experts recommend repotting orchids when the roots are actively growing (green root tips indicate active root growth). Note: Many orchid growers have acquired an irrational fear of plant viruses. This causes growers to follow some pretty nutty procedures, like sterilizing cutting tool under the flame of a butane torch, dipping the cutting tool in anti-viral chemicals (like a 10 percent bleach solution), or using disposable razor blades. They disinfect after each cut. If this trips your trigger, hey, go for it. But as for me, I'm prepared to live with a few plant viruses. In the wilds, all plants are exposed to viruses, and after several million years, plants have managed to survive just fine. It's much more likely that you will be the cause of your plants decline, not caused by a plant virus.

Step 4. Repot the plant in a properly sized pot. Pick a pot about 1 inch in diameter larger then the root ball needs. Picking a much larger sized pot will not help the plant. Oversized pots often lead to root rot. Fill the pot with your favorite orchid potting mix. I use a mixture of pine bark and horticultural charcoal. Other choices are lava rock, long fiber sphagnum moss, and cubed coconut husks. In doesn't matter what you use, as long as it drains well and allows air to circulate around the roots. For that reason, don't use ordinary houseplant potting mix. Potting mix is too dense and the orchid roots will usually rot.

Step 5. Clean the leaves with lemon juice. Bottled Realemon lemon juice works just fine. Some orchid experts recommend cleaning with milk. It works fine, but the leaves smell like the dairy department of your grocery store. Don't use a waxy leaf cleaners. Plant leaves need to breath and exchange gasses, waxy leaf cleaners block the stomas.

Step 6. Lightly fertilize the plant if you wish. I use 1/4th to 1/8th of the recommended fertilizer strength every week. The generally accepted rule is, fertilize weekly weakly. Many expert orchid growers do not fertilize during winter, some do not fertilize ever. Whether to fertilize or not is a personal choice. Healthy orchids will grow and bloom just fine with, or without, fertilizer.

Step 7. Saturate the potting material with lots of water. In winter, most growers water once per week. In the heat of summer, you may need to water 2-3 times per week. I have watered my plants with well water and had great results with 95 percent of my plants. The other 5 percent of the plants require watering with a lower Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) contents. If you decide to grow the finicky orchids, you could water with Reverse Osmosis (RO) water or rain water. Or, you could decide not to grow the few finicky orchid species.

Step 8. All finished. Your orchid is repotted and is now ready to be enjoyed.