Please see the exchange below. Can anyone advise me if the plants in the
picture should be given a "winter rest" with no water, or are these likely
to be the kind that need to be actively watered year 'round?
Thanks, C. Berlin

"C. Berlin" wrote in message
news:VFwTi.3800$uE4.371@trnddc07...
I have a few dozen orchids, mostly no-name, growing in my window sills (on
porch in summer). I've been able to sucessfully get the phals, paphs,
cymbidiums, oncidiums, and masdevalias to all bloom nicely over the past
few years. However, no luck with the dendrobiums. I have two that look
healthy (lots of growth) that I've had for ?3-4 years, but have never
rebloomed since I originally got them (can't remember where they came from,
and no labels). I've read that many dendrobiums need a dry period, and one
acquaintance who does well with orchids says to let them go totally dry for
a long time, and lose all their leaves, then begin to rewater, and they'll
then bloom. But I've also read that there are some dendrobiums that should
stay watered and green year round. I'm thus confused what to do here, and
I'm a little uneasy about letting them go totally dry for a long time.
What I've actually done is somewhere in between, just very lightly and
infrequently watering in the winter. While the plants stay healthy, no
blooms. The light I have through the windows (west facing glass patio
doors) is less than optimal. They get the same very dilute fertilizer as
everything else does.
Any advice about what to do to get these to bloom will be appreciated.
Chuck B.




Both you and your friend are right. Dendrobiums are a huge diverse group,
some of which like to go totally dry for long periods of time, others like
to be kept moist like other orchids. So you need to figure out which sort
of dendrobium you have. If you are in the USA a decent book is Ortho's 'All
About Growing Orchids' (sells for about $12 or see if the library has one).
Their abbvreviated overview of the various types of orchids would be a
decent beginning. Their dendrobium pages at least would tell you what
general type of dendrobium you have. Then you can make an informed decision
as to how to proceed.

K Barrett