"Kevin" wrote in message
om...
OK- first the phals.... I've got 20 or so, and I've only been doing
the orchid thing about 8 months now. Many of them I got when they
were in bloom, and they faded (although I did lop the spike off on all
of them to get a second bloom...) so I cut the spikes back. So now
I'm waiting on my first, and their 2nd+, blooming. I understand that
Phal's are well liked because of their long/many blooming period- so
when do I get some blooms? It's been maybe 4 months or so, and I'm
getting new growth and I've repotted where necessary, but no spikes.
And you can tell me that I'm just being greedy.... If I have to wait,
so be it, but I'm looking for some idea on when I should worry. I'm
sure that surviving through temps way too high (a few 100 deg days,
many 90+) in a MO summer didn't help. Perhaps I'm looking for someone
to tell me that things are OK, they're just mad at the temps and will
repay me with the cooler fall temps....

I am not sure what to say about the dends. I have new growth on almost all
of them, but I haven't rebloomed any yet.

It is almost certain that the temps you saw were not a problem, unless you
let them get too dry. After all, phals are normally distributed through the
tropics and subtropics of the far east, and, I can tell you from living
there for a couple of years several years ago, it often gets much hotter
there (at sea level) than it did where you are. But there is plenty of
variability even there, so if you have phals more suitable to the very high
elevations in tropical asia, it may have been a wee bit too warm for them,
but that doesn't seem to be very likely, especially since you report that
they seem to be healthy enough to grow.

As for the phals, it isn't unusual to see an annual cycle. My irises,
planted in my garden, bloomed in the late spring, and I won't see them bloom
until next spring. The point it, seasonality is commonplace, and that is
true of tropical plants and ecosystems (but in the tropics the seasonaility
has more to do with rainfall than temperature, but because of the rain,
temperature too varies even in the tropics - it just isn't as extreme as it
is here). I have managed to rebloom some of my phals, and that a few weeks
after the last bloom faded, but that was in response to repotting after the
last bloom faded and it was from the original inflorescence. And, I have
another that is in spike right now, sending a new infloresence from the top
node of the old infloresence (I let the plant tell me what it wants cut and
when, so in some cases I have cut the old infloresence right down, and some
only to the top node that hadn't produced a bloom, and still others not at
all).

But the majority of my phals have not rebloomed yet, and I do not expect new
infloresences to start developing until later this autumn. We're just
beginning to get some cool nights with pleasant days continuing. But I am
not certain even of this because only a couple of them have sent up a new
leaf (the ones that have are, with one exception, either seedlings or
keikis), and I do not know if there is any seasonal pattern in leaf
production as there seems to be in flowering. And who knows, maybe the
plants were sufficiently stressed that they'll skip a year or two. Phals
are indeed well liked because of their long lasting flowering period, and
with the phals I bought, the blooms typically lasted several months, but
that doesn't mean you don't have to be patient.

You say you repotted as necessary. Did you repot all of them, or were there
some that the vendour told you had been repotted shortly before you bought
them? And, if you were told by a vendor that a given phal didn't need to be
repotted, how much do you trust him? The first catt I bought is now dead,
and it died basically because the vendour had not repotted it in many years,
and what likely had been bark was so degraded it looked like fine mud, and
all of the roots on the plant were dead. I was able to keep it going for
onths, hoping it would recover, but alas, there was one hot dry week
recently when I was so busy I forgot my usual watering cycle, and while none
of the other orchids were adversely affected by my negligence, it was too
weak to survive it. But the point is, not all vendors are trustworthy, and
you may have received bad advice. With any newly acquired plant, it is good
practice to repot every new plant once it has finished blooming unless you
bought it from a vendor you know and trust (based on experience with other
plants bought from him), and he tells you it won't need to be repotted for
another year or two because he had repotted it himself relatively recently.
The reason is, you want to be able to see just how healthy or sickly the
roots are and how fresh the medium is, and the only way to do that is to
repot it yourself, or take the word of a vendor you know you can trust. I
always repot plants obtained from a place like Home Depot or the local
garden centre, and I always repot at least the first few plants from any
vendor, until based on what I observe when repotting, I determine that the
vendor is trustworthy. Of course, if I find, from the first few plants from
a given vendor, that the roots are usually in very bad shape, I won't be
buying anything further from that vendor anyway, but that is another story.
I have a few vendors that I would trust implicitly, some of whom invariably
tell me when I bought that I ought to repot when the bloom is done (and
often that is because they bought the plants in bloom relatively recently),
and others tell me which of the plants I bought they had recently repotted
and which they had not, and I know from experience that their plants are
invariably in great shape, with very robust roots.

As for whether or not you should worry, or when you should worry, I'd
suggest you wait either a couple years or until the plants stop growing and
start to die, whichever comes first. ;-)

Cheers,

Ted