New spikes?
 

I have chopped my phal spikes and it's closing to the end of summer here in Greece(link below). When should I expect a new spike? ( if there will be one). I took the big step and placed them outside. It's been a week and all seems great... Hopefully all will be ok. There is a thing that grows on the side of one of them but I've been told that it's a root. Which either way is a good thing.

Likely blooming season for these are over, but they can surprise you if they are well grown. If a nubbin is growing from the side of the plant, and not at the intersection of leaf/crown, it is def. a root. If it's from the leaf intersection point, let us know what it looks like. Mitten = spike, more cone like = root, generally.

With any luck you will see a new spike next spring. And roots are good! When they are putting out new roots, it usually happy. Remember no direct sunlight and bring them in before it gets 10C degrees. Sorry but your link is not their.

Not to hijack the thread... I've got a phal that has 3 "mittens" on the end of spikes that were present when I bought the plant almost two months ago. They never did anything... they look the same as when I got the plant. The plant had 4 flowers and only one is left at this point. Is there any chance the "mittens" are simply dormant for the moment and will eventually spike?

Possible, But they will most likely will blast. Best thing you can do for the plant is to cut the spike below the first node and let the plant work on giving you the best flowers possible next flowering cycle. Healthy plant, healthy flowers. Over worked plant, under developed flowers

On my other Phal, I didn't do any pruning after the first blooming and it gave me a generous bloom of 15 flowers (first time was around 6-7). The orchid I posted about looks rather young (bought it a few months ago), so my thought was that it might be best to not prune this time around.


So do orchid plants sometimes fail to do the optimal thing? Meaning, the spike has served its purpose but the plant will keep feeding it nutrients when it would be best to let it die off? And pruning is a manual-override to make that happen sooner, allowing those nutrients to be utilized for leaf growth and sprouting the next main spike?

Is it fairly common that when a Phal gets to the blooming stage that some buds will not mature? And that leaving them intact after flowering means nutrients will be spent keeping the spike alive that would be better used towards leaf growing?

My take on this 'to cut or not to cut' debate is to leave the plant to its own devices. It doesn't want to rebloom off an old spike, that's fine by me, I'm not going to force it to. If it does, I assume the plant does so because it has the energy to do so. There's genetics involved too. Some seen to never rebloom and the spike yellows immediately, others do it all the time. As an extreme example, I have a Phal (a somewhat sequential blooming hybrid) which has been in near continuous bloom for nearly 3 years. Most of the nodes wake up and produce side spikes, and the plant continues making new spikes as well. Looks happy, so I let it be.

By blooms not maturing you mean that they blast? That's usually do to environmental causes rather than the plant itself.

Hi Camille, I'd prefer to let things be natural as possible and only assist the plant when it is helpful. That's how I discovered that my first phal would rebloom off the same main spike for a 2nd time before ultimately giving up on it.

This 2nd phal that I got came with several flowers blooming and a couple of buds... but the buds fell off, which I attributed to environment change. The plant remained healthy after that. However, I noticed a few end points on spikes having "mittens"... they look like tiny buds that I was expecting to bloom, but didn't. They still look healthy, just doing nothing. I've just learned that they're actually spike buds... that might form future spikes, but not flowers. Is that correct?

Congrats on that plant which is continuously blooming--sounds like a very entertaining one to have. :)

I don't know if we're taking about the same thing or not, but it seems like all spikes end with a mitten shaped nob at the end, whether they keep growing from there or not. But I'm not sure if that's exactly what you are referring to.