What I've learned after growing this group for somewhere between 15-20 years:
1. The issue of watering at the right time is complex, but a few things are straight forward: dry media until new roots are 4" long on adult plants is a near guaranteed formula for success with the commonly grown Catasetinae (Catasetum, Cycnoches, Mormodes, Clowesia) and their hybrids. Period. Watering early is risky and has mixed success, depending on a variety of factors.
2. Complex hybrids (like FDK) often don't obey the rules of dry roots in the same way as their non-hybrid cousins. Hybrid vigor in plants is real and readily observed across many many genera. This is why many people cut their teeth on complex hybrids and do well, only to branch out into species and have spectacular failures.
3. I've killed A LOT of Catasetinae by watering early in spring. I was growing this group before there was much information so I experimented a lot and killed a lot.
4. Second flushes of growths in summer seem to do well without obeying the dryness formula around the roots. Not sure why this is! Or maybe the roots don't do well on the second growth of the season, but the first growth of the season has put out so many new roots that the plant does just fine even with poor root growth on the second growth. I'm not entirely sure which is true!
---------- Post added at 10:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:02 PM ----------
Also, your new growths (as seen in photo 2) already look like they'll be smaller than your other growths. I'm curious to see how big they are by the time dormancy comes around.
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