Phalaenopsis Orchid with brown spotted stem

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Everybody starts somewhere.

[camille1585]

Philip already gave you all the info you need about the spike, but as for reblooming in the fall, that completely depends. If you give your plant plenty of indirect light with a little bit of morning or late afternoon sun (depends on the windows you have) there's no reason for it not to rebloom. And of course you need to feed it regularily. Usually phals will start spikes (or inflorescence or stem, or whatever you want to call it. ) in the fall or early winter and will bloom somewhere between 80-120 days after it appears. But this is not the rule, as some phals bloom whenever they want. Out of my 20 phals or so, about a third of them bloom whenever they darn please!

[RosieC]

Nothing wrong with the orchid, as Philip has said it's just the flower spike (correctly called inflorescence but I always say flower spike ) which is dying back.

Sometimes Phals will rebloom from an old spike but not always so if it starts to go brown you can cut it off (usually as close to the plant as possible without damaging the plant).

Many phals will flower again (and produce a new flower spike) when there is a temperature drop in the fall, but that is not true of all of them. If you are not sure I would make do as Camille says, care for it as well as you can, then make sure there is about a 10F drop in temp in the fall.

Having said that some phals are propted by brighter light (not direct) also I kept mine between about 60F and 66F over the winter and while that was a temperature drop it was really too cold for them, so they went dormant and started flowering again this spring when it warmed up again.

[RosieC]

Finally as Philip has advised, it's best to repot now. Try and get a good quality bark medium, stuff from the local places can often be stale already (unless you happen to have an orchid specialist locally).

rePotme Orchid Supplies is meant to be a good place to buy it from (I'm in the UK so I use a different UK based site).

[amycalmes]

Thank you all so very much for your awesome advice! I went to the store today and got everything that I needed (I think!). I am going to repot it tonight and take very good care of it and hopefully it will rebloom! Here's hoping!