My orchid is in its dormant form right now. I followed th...
3ft to light, direct
4” pot with drainage
Last watered 2 days ago
4
@HeirWinika39 Hi Corinne! Welcome to Greg! I have a few orchids, and all three act different! One will flower again in just a couple months but the other two I’ve been waiting 8 months so far, so if you find out the answer, I would love to know! I think they each one think for themselves- good luck🪴🌺
My best success with phalaenopsis reblooming is making sure your nighttime temperature are considerably cooler than your day time. I have deep windowsills and insulated curtains I close at night which helps with this. I fertilize with miracle grow every 14 days and stop once buds start opening . I only remove stems that are brown and cut back to the last bud. I hope this makes sense and helps you both. Brian
@Ponytailmom , you are right. I can give them the same treatment but they decide when they are ready to bloom again. I used to live near a huge orchid nursery that provided boarding service for out of bloom season. I reserved that for the more challenging varieties. Rod McClellan’s Acres of Orchids in San Francisco. If you ever are in that area it is worth a visit. You will be amazed at the place!
You haven’t given any info on what you did to try to trigger a bloom or how long since its bloom ended, and there is no current photo of what your plant looks like right now (to gauge health, number of leaves). The orchid isn’t necessarily ‘dormant’, it’s just in a growth phase where it focuses on leaves and roots and gathering the energy/nutrients it needs to be able to bloom again.
Blooming takes a lot of energy, so following reblooming advice before the plant has enough energy to be doing so is generally not going to make it bloom. In a mature NOID phalaenopsis, the fastest rest period I’ve gotten is 2-3 months… that plant was also a prolific bloomer, so it would also stay in bloom for 6-9 months. It could easily take 6-12 months to get your plant to rebloom for the first time.
If it hasn’t been at least 3 months since your last bloom, you need to wait. If it’s in the middle of growing a new leaf, I would also wait until the leaf gets at least the size of the other leaves. If it doesn’t have at least 4 leaves, it probably won’t bloom.
If your orchid meets those criterion, I would give it a temperature drop (ideally by around 10 degrees to the 55-65 range) for about 3 weeks and withhold water for around a month (if your environment is super dry and it starts looking thirsty to the point of shriveling, give it a little water… I have only done this living in cities adjacent to large bodies of water and a person may need to do something slightly different in a place like high desert). You can also move it to super low light during this time. A bathroom is usually a good place to do this because they tend to be colder and have higher average humidity than other rooms. The whole point is to stress it a bit and trick it into thinking it is enduring a cool dry season so when you put it back into its normal environment it will trigger the hormonal changes it needs to initiate a bloom cycle. If the plant is ready to bloom, you will usually see a spike start to grow within a month after moving the plant back to comfortable conditions… it will still take additional time after that for the spikes and buds to grow and mature.
Blooming takes a lot of energy, so following reblooming advice before the plant has enough energy to be doing so is generally not going to make it bloom. In a mature NOID phalaenopsis, the fastest rest period I’ve gotten is 2-3 months… that plant was also a prolific bloomer, so it would also stay in bloom for 6-9 months. It could easily take 6-12 months to get your plant to rebloom for the first time.
If it hasn’t been at least 3 months since your last bloom, you need to wait. If it’s in the middle of growing a new leaf, I would also wait until the leaf gets at least the size of the other leaves. If it doesn’t have at least 4 leaves, it probably won’t bloom.
If your orchid meets those criterion, I would give it a temperature drop (ideally by around 10 degrees to the 55-65 range) for about 3 weeks and withhold water for around a month (if your environment is super dry and it starts looking thirsty to the point of shriveling, give it a little water… I have only done this living in cities adjacent to large bodies of water and a person may need to do something slightly different in a place like high desert). You can also move it to super low light during this time. A bathroom is usually a good place to do this because they tend to be colder and have higher average humidity than other rooms. The whole point is to stress it a bit and trick it into thinking it is enduring a cool dry season so when you put it back into its normal environment it will trigger the hormonal changes it needs to initiate a bloom cycle. If the plant is ready to bloom, you will usually see a spike start to grow within a month after moving the plant back to comfortable conditions… it will still take additional time after that for the spikes and buds to grow and mature.