I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.
The cymbidium I have had for about 15 years. I bought it in flower
for my Mum, and it has never flowered since. It's huge and looks
healthy enough. The last 2 summers it has spent outside in a shady
part of the garden. It used to be in the bathroom but it's now in the
living room where it might be a bit warmer.
The phalaenopsis I've had 4 or 5 years. It had 2 flowering stems
which I cut back to the next node as top flowers faded and eventually
cut off the whole stems when they went woody. All it will produce now
ar aerial roots, which come out of each leaf joint.
Do any of you have suggestions from personal experience? I've read up
quite a bit but cannot find what I'm not doing.
Feeding? I give them an occasional (every month or so) feed of orchid
fertiliser and I think I'm watering correctly.

Pam in Bristol

"Pam Moore" wrote ..
I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.
The cymbidium I have had for about 15 years. I bought it in flower
for my Mum, and it has never flowered since. It's huge and looks
healthy enough. The last 2 summers it has spent outside in a shady
part of the garden. It used to be in the bathroom but it's now in the
living room where it might be a bit warmer.
The phalaenopsis I've had 4 or 5 years. It had 2 flowering stems
which I cut back to the next node as top flowers faded and eventually
cut off the whole stems when they went woody. All it will produce now
ar aerial roots, which come out of each leaf joint.
Do any of you have suggestions from personal experience? I've read up
quite a bit but cannot find what I'm not doing.
Feeding? I give them an occasional (every month or so) feed of orchid
fertiliser and I think I'm watering correctly.


The Cymbidium needs cold nights to initiate flower spikes so keeping it
indoors in a warm room will stop it flowering. Ours are still outside and
won't come in until a frost is forecast. Also need good feed whilst growing
in the summer and a feed of tomato feed will help. Some are easier to flower
than others too.
The best flowering one I know is owned by a friend who isn't in to orchids
and it spends summer on a S. facing patio and is watered and fed the same as
the other patio plants, full strength normal feed weekly.

Phalaenopsis. Ours flower almost constantly on S. facing windowsills with a
bit of dappled shade from a tree in the garden, compost is kept moist in
summer, dryer in winter, but no water trays at all. Water with rainwater at
room temp in the morning to let them dry off before night with feed every
other watering, in the summer I water weekly and let it pour through. If you
give them too much light they will get a reddish tinge to the leaves so you
know. Potted in half and half live sphagnum moss and bark chippings in clear
pots, I found it difficult to keep them growing in bark alone, probably too
dry. The roots are key IMO, keep them growing well with big green tips and
the plants do well, let them go grey and they die off.

Hope those ramblings help.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
just W. of London

Pam Moore wrote:
I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.
The cymbidium I have had for about 15 years. I bought it in flower
for my Mum, and it has never flowered since. It's huge and looks
healthy enough. The last 2 summers it has spent outside in a shady
part of the garden. It used to be in the bathroom but it's now in the
living room where it might be a bit warmer.

May need to be cooler to initiate flowering. Also overpotting is a great
way to stop them flowering - you get lots of new leaves and no flowers
until the thing is practically bursting the pot with roots.

The phalaenopsis I've had 4 or 5 years. It had 2 flowering stems
which I cut back to the next node as top flowers faded and eventually
cut off the whole stems when they went woody. All it will produce now
ar aerial roots, which come out of each leaf joint.

Sounds like it might prefer a slightly more humid atmosphere. Mine tend
to flower almost continuously so long as they are not overpotted.

Do any of you have suggestions from personal experience? I've read up
quite a bit but cannot find what I'm not doing.
Feeding? I give them an occasional (every month or so) feed of orchid
fertiliser and I think I'm watering correctly.

A bit of extra orchid food might not go amiss. They tolerate
underwatering pretty well and don't like wet feet.
Mine get treated a bit like cacti.

Regards,
Martin Brown

"Pam Moore" wrote in message
...
I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.
The cymbidium I have had for about 15 years. I bought it in flower
for my Mum, and it has never flowered since. It's huge and looks
healthy enough. The last 2 summers it has spent outside in a shady
part of the garden. It used to be in the bathroom but it's now in the
living room where it might be a bit warmer.
The phalaenopsis I've had 4 or 5 years. It had 2 flowering stems
which I cut back to the next node as top flowers faded and eventually
cut off the whole stems when they went woody. All it will produce now
ar aerial roots, which come out of each leaf joint.
Do any of you have suggestions from personal experience? I've read up
quite a bit but cannot find what I'm not doing.
Feeding? I give them an occasional (every month or so) feed of orchid
fertiliser and I think I'm watering correctly.

Pam in Bristol

Hi Pam,

I have a number of Phalaenopsis, which have recently come back into flower.
I found them quite difficult to reflower, but everyone I spoke to said they
were really easy. So frustrating, isn't it!?
I consulted my books, which suggested keeping the plants at a lower
temperature for four weeks: 5degC or 8degF. To be honest, although I kept
mine in a cooler place, I did not measure the temperature, *and* they were
kept cooler for about 3 months! I kept them a tiny bit drier at this time
and reduced feeding to roughly 2 weeks out of 4. This all happened over the
winter period. In spring, I put them back in a warmer room (but only
slightly warmer) with better light and normal feeding. After a little
while, I was delighted to see flowering stems appearing.
I normally feed my orchids every 7-10 days. After three feeds, I use water
only to flush the plants through. They do not enjoy a build-up a chemical
salts.
I have one Cymbidium orchid (my Xmas pressie 2009 from 2 perfect friends)
which has really only just gone out of flower (as it was bought), so I
haven't had the experience of building this one up to flowering yet. One
book suggests they can be difficult to flower again, and it depends on the
type you have. Since you say yours is huge, it's obviously not a dwarf
form! I will see what I can find out; I've got other books to check yet, so
I'll come back to you soon.
In the meantime, I would say that your feeding sounds a bit stingy. I'm
sure it's enough to keep your plant healthy, but perhaps not enough to build
it up to flowering? I may be wrong, of course, and it may prefer to be kept
hungry to traumatise it into flowering. Let me have a browse through my
books before you change anything.

Spider

Pam Moore wrote:
I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.
The cymbidium I have had for about 15 years. I bought it in flower
for my Mum, and it has never flowered since. It's huge and looks
healthy enough. The last 2 summers it has spent outside in a shady
part of the garden. It used to be in the bathroom but it's now in the
living room where it might be a bit warmer.
The phalaenopsis I've had 4 or 5 years. It had 2 flowering stems
which I cut back to the next node as top flowers faded and eventually
cut off the whole stems when they went woody. All it will produce now
ar aerial roots, which come out of each leaf joint.
Do any of you have suggestions from personal experience? I've read up
quite a bit but cannot find what I'm not doing.
Feeding? I give them an occasional (every month or so) feed of orchid
fertiliser and I think I'm watering correctly.

Pam in Bristol

Can't say about Cymbidium, as I got rid of mine many years ago as I thought
it a very scruffy and uninteretsing plant when not in flower.

My Phalaenopsis grows on a NW-facing bathroom window. It is potted in
ericaceous compost and bits of old Oasis left over from my wife's
flower-arranging (about 3:1 ratio by volume), and is in a round transparent
plastic pot which just fits in a cube-shaped glass container. If I
remember, it gets ordinary Phostrogen or Miracle Grow (or a similar type of
fertiliser) once every month or two. I water it regularly with cooled water
from the hot tap and always keep it damp. Our water is not exactly
chalk-free! About once every couple of months I drown it in water (up to
the top of the soil) for around 30 minutes, and then let it drain away
completely. It almost never stops flowering.

--
Jeff

On Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:55:38 +0100, Pam Moore
wrote:

I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.

Thanks Bob, Martin, Spider and Jeff for your very helpful advice.
Bob, I only brought my cymbidium indoors last week when frost was
forecast, though I don't think it happened!
Perhaps it will be better back in the bathroom rather than the living
room. Only ambient temp in there most of the time.
I only have east and west-facing windows!
My feeling is that I probably don't feed enough in the summer. I'm
sure I'm doing the watering right.
I'll try and work out from your replies what I might do differently.
I appreciate your input.

Pam in Bristol

Pam Moore wrote:
I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.
The cymbidium I have had for about 15 years. I bought it in flower
for my Mum, and it has never flowered since. It's huge and looks
healthy enough. The last 2 summers it has spent outside in a shady
part of the garden. It used to be in the bathroom but it's now in the
living room where it might be a bit warmer.
The phalaenopsis I've had 4 or 5 years. It had 2 flowering stems
which I cut back to the next node as top flowers faded and eventually
cut off the whole stems when they went woody. All it will produce now
ar aerial roots, which come out of each leaf joint.
Do any of you have suggestions from personal experience? I've read up
quite a bit but cannot find what I'm not doing.
Feeding? I give them an occasional (every month or so) feed of orchid
fertiliser and I think I'm watering correctly.

I have various orchids about the house, mostly phalaenopsis, and
a couple of, hmm, dendrobium, iirc. I think I've had a cymbidium
in the past, but killed it after 3 or 4 years. It was an odd one
actually - first year it flowered with one large flower; next year
it flowered with hundreds of tiny flowers on a stem; third year it
flowered with one flower again! Then it died.

My phalaenopsis all keep flowering almost constantly - one flowered
for 3 1/2 years running, with a total of 162 flowers! (yes, I was
sad enough to count them :-)

I can't give advice on the cymbidium, but my tip for the phalaenopsis
is to keep it on a north facing, non-draughty window sill, and treat
it mean - I rarely water mine, but when I do I totally soak them
(often for a few hours in the sink in lukewarm water, then drain them
again), and I even more rarely feed or mist them. They just kind of
get on with things. Also, when your flower stems are finished, if
you cut them back a bit then they should reflower quickly, but poorly.
Take the whole stem off and it will flower much stronger next time.

On the other hand, my dendrobiums (dendrobiii?) love a south facing
window and a more regular soaking (once or twice a month, as opposed
to the 2 or 3 times a year the phalaenopsis get!)

On Oct 14, 9:55*am, Pam Moore wrote:
I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.
The cymbidium I have had for about 15 years. *I bought it in flower
for my Mum, and it has never flowered since. *It's huge and looks
healthy enough. *The last 2 summers it has spent outside in a shady
part of the garden. *It used to be in the bathroom but it's now in the
living room where it might be a bit warmer.
The phalaenopsis I've had 4 or 5 years. *It had 2 flowering stems
which I cut back to the next node as top flowers faded and eventually
cut off the whole stems when they went woody. *All it will produce now
ar aerial roots, which come out of each leaf joint.
Do any of you have suggestions from personal experience? *I've read up
quite a bit but cannot find what I'm not doing.
Feeding? *I give them an occasional (every month or so) feed of orchid
fertiliser and I think I'm watering correctly.

Pam in Bristol

On 14 Oct 2009 22:46:53 GMT, wrote:

Pam Moore wrote:
I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.
The cymbidium I have had for about 15 years. I bought it in flower
for my Mum, and it has never flowered since. It's huge and looks
healthy enough. The last 2 summers it has spent outside in a shady
part of the garden. It used to be in the bathroom but it's now in the
living room where it might be a bit warmer.
The phalaenopsis I've had 4 or 5 years. It had 2 flowering stems
which I cut back to the next node as top flowers faded and eventually
cut off the whole stems when they went woody. All it will produce now
ar aerial roots, which come out of each leaf joint.
Do any of you have suggestions from personal experience? I've read up
quite a bit but cannot find what I'm not doing.
Feeding? I give them an occasional (every month or so) feed of orchid
fertiliser and I think I'm watering correctly.

I have various orchids about the house, mostly phalaenopsis, and
a couple of, hmm, dendrobium, iirc. I think I've had a cymbidium
in the past, but killed it after 3 or 4 years. It was an odd one
actually - first year it flowered with one large flower; next year
it flowered with hundreds of tiny flowers on a stem; third year it
flowered with one flower again! Then it died.

My phalaenopsis all keep flowering almost constantly - one flowered
for 3 1/2 years running, with a total of 162 flowers! (yes, I was
sad enough to count them :-)

I can't give advice on the cymbidium, but my tip for the phalaenopsis
is to keep it on a north facing, non-draughty window sill, and treat
it mean - I rarely water mine, but when I do I totally soak them
(often for a few hours in the sink in lukewarm water, then drain them
again), and I even more rarely feed or mist them. They just kind of
get on with things. Also, when your flower stems are finished, if
you cut them back a bit then they should reflower quickly, but poorly.
Take the whole stem off and it will flower much stronger next time.

On the other hand, my dendrobiums (dendrobiii?) love a south facing
window and a more regular soaking (once or twice a month, as opposed
to the 2 or 3 times a year the phalaenopsis get!)

Thanks Vicky. I must ignore them for a bit and see what happens!


Pam in Bristol

Pam Moore wrote:
On 14 Oct 2009 22:46:53 GMT, wrote:

Pam Moore wrote:
I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.
The cymbidium I have had for about 15 years. I bought it in flower
for my Mum, and it has never flowered since. It's huge and looks
healthy enough. The last 2 summers it has spent outside in a shady
part of the garden. It used to be in the bathroom but it's now in the
living room where it might be a bit warmer.
The phalaenopsis I've had 4 or 5 years. It had 2 flowering stems
which I cut back to the next node as top flowers faded and eventually
cut off the whole stems when they went woody. All it will produce now
ar aerial roots, which come out of each leaf joint.
Do any of you have suggestions from personal experience? I've read up
quite a bit but cannot find what I'm not doing.
Feeding? I give them an occasional (every month or so) feed of orchid
fertiliser and I think I'm watering correctly.
I have various orchids about the house, mostly phalaenopsis, and
a couple of, hmm, dendrobium, iirc. I think I've had a cymbidium
in the past, but killed it after 3 or 4 years. It was an odd one
actually - first year it flowered with one large flower; next year
it flowered with hundreds of tiny flowers on a stem; third year it
flowered with one flower again! Then it died.

My phalaenopsis all keep flowering almost constantly - one flowered
for 3 1/2 years running, with a total of 162 flowers! (yes, I was
sad enough to count them :-)

I can't give advice on the cymbidium, but my tip for the phalaenopsis
is to keep it on a north facing, non-draughty window sill, and treat
it mean - I rarely water mine, but when I do I totally soak them
(often for a few hours in the sink in lukewarm water, then drain them
again), and I even more rarely feed or mist them. They just kind of
get on with things. Also, when your flower stems are finished, if
you cut them back a bit then they should reflower quickly, but poorly.
Take the whole stem off and it will flower much stronger next time.

On the other hand, my dendrobiums (dendrobiii?) love a south facing
window and a more regular soaking (once or twice a month, as opposed
to the 2 or 3 times a year the phalaenopsis get!)

Thanks Vicky. I must ignore them for a bit and see what happens!

Actually it is quite possible that too regular watering might encourge
excess vegetative growth and no flowers. If the plant doesn't feel a
little bit threatened why waste energy on flowers and seeds.

Regards,
Martin Brown

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:33:17 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

Actually it is quite possible that too regular watering might encourge
excess vegetative growth and no flowers. If the plant doesn't feel a
little bit threatened why waste energy on flowers and seeds.

Martin, I think you may be right!

Pam in Bristol

Pam Moore writes
On Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:55:38 +0100, Pam Moore
wrote:

I have 2 orchids, a Phalaenopsis and a cymbidium which won't
re-flower.

Thanks Bob, Martin, Spider and Jeff for your very helpful advice.
Bob, I only brought my cymbidium indoors last week when frost was
forecast, though I don't think it happened!
Perhaps it will be better back in the bathroom rather than the living
room. Only ambient temp in there most of the time.
I only have east and west-facing windows!

Bob mentioned they need cool nights to initiate flowering, and I read
somewhere that they need a large temperature difference (c 10 deg F) to
initiate flowering - something that is much easier to achieve outdoors.
--
Kay