Dendrobium stardust Firebird reblooming question

[Miss Flower]

Wow thanks very much for the help. I don't have a spot like that but I think I will put it in the fridge, NOT freezer. That's at 4 degrees.

[NYCorchidman]

If you can fit it in the fridge, it could work.
You want to make sure you don't have ripe fruits in the fridge because they emit ethylene gas which destroys flower buds.

When you see spikes swell up on the nodes on the cane, keep sticking it in the fridge until you can clearly see tiny buds on each spike. Then you can stop sticking the plant in the fridge, but bud blast may or may not follow.

Good luck!

[Miss Flower]

Thanks again for all the info I will post if there is a change. I will put it in the wine fridge at 8 Celsius. No fruit there

[WhiteRabbit]

I'd be hesitant about putting in the fridge ... but if others think it's ok, perhaps it is

I definitely wouldn't do so now, as it's likely too late to initiate spikes.
Tho again, if others think differently ...
But generally late summer - early autumn is the time to start the rest period.

Are you able to have this outside at all, late summer / early autumn, until it gets too cold?

[Miss Flower]

I live in an appartment and i don't have a balcony. Not much chance for putting it outside. Probably this winter it would have been perfect since the winter was so mild...it was more like fall.

[NYCorchidman]

This is still cold season. it is not too late to "force" them. You might be lucky to have lots of bloom since your plant hasn't flowered for a while.

Sonya- Late summer and early fall is not the time to rest nobiles. Many are still in maturing stage then.
Rest start when the winter comes like November, although it is possible to force them a bit earlier.

[WhiteRabbit]

Originally Posted by NYCorchidman

This is still cold season. it is not too late to "force" them. You might be lucky to have lots of bloom since your plant hasn't flowered for a while.

Sonya- Late summer and early fall is not the time to rest nobiles. Many are still in maturing stage then.
Rest start when the winter comes like November, although it is possible to force them a bit earlier.

Well, first day of winter is in late December ... first day of autumn is late September, so I'm going by that - start withholding fert in Sept, reduce water greatly in November ... Yes ?

[NYCorchidman]

No, to be on the safe side, you want to stop fertilizing right before the plant matures the new cane, which is usually around late summer or into fall. I stop as early as late July.

Reducing water will start once the new cane is done growing and the cane itself has fatten up quite a bit.
I think this is usually around November, yes.

[Miss Flower]

After 2 weeks of keeping it overnight in the wine fridge I decided to leave it on the windowsill and 3 weeks later I started watering it: 1 a week, soak and drain.

This is how it looks now...are those flower buds?

[RosieC]

They could either be flower buds or keikis starting.

I missed this thread previously but I grow Den Stardust 'Chyomi' and for the first time this year I got it to bloom (having owned it since 2010).

This year I did NOT give it a cool period or even a dry period, that didn't help the last few years and the plant seemed to really struggle as a result of the cool/dry period. Also someone else in the UK who had a Stardust told me they didn't give a cool/dry rest.

I kept it on my bathroom windowledge (south-west facing). Having got lots of keikis over the years (instead of flowers) I have several plants now. I have some growing in moss and some in plain Leca (not S/H, I've grown it that way in the past but now switched to plain Leca). The ones in Leca were watered every two days, the ones in moss were watered whenever the moss went crunchy dry, but I didn't leave them more than a day that dry, so they were not really drying out.

The key I'm pretty sure, is that this year is the first year I stopped fertilising at the end of August (rather than later in previous years) and just used plain rain water for every watering from then until after the flowering earlier in the year.

The couple that flowered were the oldest keikis (from 2011) both growing in Leca and watered every couple of days.

Previous dry/cool rests combined with mites finally killed the parent plant last year, it had declined with every cool or dry or cool/dry rest I had tried to give, improved a little during the summer, but was declining more in the winter than it was gaining back in the summer, then the mites finally did for it. I had always kept the keikis warmer and wetter as someone had advised me not to try and bloom young plants, and they were certainly always much healthier than the parent.

The lack of a cool rest requirement for this one suprised me when someone else told me about it, because the unicum parent needs it. This one really doesn't seem to need to though.

---------- Post added at 04:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:50 PM ----------

While this IS a nobile hybrid the nobile is actually quite far back in it's parantage. It's closer to unicum and has some other things mixed in as well as the unicum and nobile.

I keep seeing it sold as a nobile hybrid but my experience with it is that it doesn't actually grow much like my nobile hyrbids, which like the cool/dry rest.