Growing Separate Set of Leaves??
 

Hi there,
Well, the folks on this forum helped me rescue my grocery store mini Phal and she seems to be doing pretty well now. I've added Kelp Extract mix to her waterings every other week and put her in a much smaller pot until she recoups. Now it seems a completely different set of leaves outside of the main crown have taken off. See picture. Is this normal? Anything special I need to do to care for her with this interesting growth?
Thanks once again!

Wow! Well, phals makes so-called basal keikis and that is a new crown developing from the stem. I've just never seen them so far away from the actual stem before. One would think this one has developed from one of the roots, almost.

As long as the plant is otherwise healthy, I'm happy to see them developing basal keikis. I have several phals with 1-3 basal keikig growing and I like how they become 'bushy' and spread out that way.

I would reduce the kelp supplementation to no more than every 3 weeks. I do so monthly.

Yup, must be the kelp!

Pretty interesting. Which kelp extract are you using? Concentration? If it has more cytokinins than auxin, it could release side buds from apical dominance in theory.

Maybe that's it!!!

I've got loads of phals making basal keikis and they are healthy plants that I've had for years before they began doing this. I've been puzzled, but I've added kelp exctract Kelpak) to the fertilizer every week for quite some time now (Not sure when I started, but I've not always done it so it's fairly recent) Maybe that's what triggered the insane explosion in basal keikis?

Could that be it?

I'll take a look at this info when I get home.
Must be the kelp!
Regardless, is there anything different/special I need to do to care for this interesting new development?

---------- Post added at 04:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:10 PM ----------

One additional note - the reason I started using kelp was because the root system was (and still is) terrible and is the reason the phal started to go downhill.

Ray, I get confused. I thought you were using Solo every watering is that not the case any more or was it never the case and I've mis-understood somewhere along the line?