Rotting leaf? - Orchid Board

King_of_orchid_growing:) · #1 05-20-2018, 10:28 AM

It is not necessary to add Epsom salt. There is no evidence to support the claim that adding Epsom salt will induce blooms on a Phalaenopsis.

Fertilizing regularly should help ensure the plant gets the necessary major, minor, and trace elements it needs to prevent deficiencies in major, minor, or trace elements.

Phalaenopsis can be induced to bloom off season. One of the triggers is actually a differential in temperatures. If the Phal hasn't already thrown out a flowering inflorescence, this is the trigger. It isn't all these other things that are somehow popping up on the internet. It is verifiable through scientific journals, and you can even try it out with fairly good reliability. Another thing is, I used to work for an orchid nursery, and this was what I was told during training.

Journals:

Average Daily Temperature and Reversed Day/Night Temperature Regulate Vegetative and Reproductive Responses of a Doritis pulcherrima
Lindley Hybrid

http://horttech.ashspublications.org...3/433.full.pdf

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...jccs.201400122

If you're wondering how I'm able to find these scientific journals, use Google Scholar as your search engine.

You don't have to always take these scientific journals at face value, you can always try it out and see if you can replicate what it is these journals are claiming. You would also have to have a good working knowledge of how to set up controls and variables in a scientific experiment.

The secondary trigger that isn't always reliable is if the Phal hybrid has breeding that includes genetics from Phal species that can bloom from the same spike repeatedly, and the plant has already thrown up a flowering inflorescence, you can cut the flowering inflorescence above the second node.

I don't encourage artificially inducing Phals to bloom repeatedly. It is energetically taxing on them. Flowers are the plant's reproductive organs, and it takes a lot of energy to produce these structures. It could hurt your Phal in the long run. This is something that I do not advise doing over and over again in the long run.

I also may have forgotten to mention this, if you were misting the orchid daily, it was a good thing this practice was stopped. It can also be a source of leaves that looks like the one your Phal in question developed.

By the way, if you're wondering how I'm able to know how Phals grow in the wild without actually having to travel to those locations, there are people who have gone to those locations already, and they've posted numerous photos and videos of Phals growing in the wild on the internet. It is no longer a rarity to find documentation and evidence of how these plants grow naturally. Like I've said in multiple posts throughout the time I've been on the OB, there is no need to take all my words at face value all the time, many of the claims I've made are already documented by either me or someone else and they have been made public. All someone needs to do is either ask and/or do the research themselves and they will find the facts. This is why I try to back up my claims with as much evidence as possible. While I don't always get things 100% correct all the time, I strive to give people the best information they can get, because I know what it was like to grow an orchid without any help from anybody else prior to the advent of the internet. When I was first growing orchids, it was in the late 80's to early 90's before the internet was introduced to the public. Prior to the internet, I had to rely on the sellers telling me how to grow orchids or on outdated books on how to grow orchids that were published back in the 60's or 70's. Back then, I was a pre-teen with immigrant parents who wouldn't have understood the concept of an orchid club.

Side note: If I'm not mistaken, if you take a course in logic, facts trumps truth. My truth can be different from your truth and vice versa, but the facts are independent of both our truths, factual evidence will be there regardless of our interpretations of what actually happens or exists.