NOID Phals spiking

[Orquiadicto]

4 of my Phals are spiking. I'm just wondering why each of them has only one spike when they had two when I bought them last year. Can anybody help me with this?

[orchidsarefun]

you not replicating "perfect" growing conditions.
Its in a growers interest that a plant have more than one spike( more $$ ), so they go out of their way to ensure optimal conditions in the grower greenhouse.
Another way to look at this is to visit a greenhouse and see if your same phals have more than 1 spike. I got a Liu's Triprince with 2 spikes, but I noticed that only about 10% of the stock had 2 spikes. So the propensity of this grex is probably NOT to have multi-spikes.
That said, some Phals do have 2 spikes regardless. I have a Baldan's Kaleidoscope that has 2 spikes every year. My challenge is to have it produce 3 spikes !

[camille1585]

orchidsarefun summed it up pretty well. And the professional growers, aside from have optimal conditions can also tweak the temperatures in their greenhouses to practically guarantee double spikes in most of the crop. And because the conditions are perfect, the plants can also be doped up with fertilizer.

The other thing is that even assuming that your Phals are genetically more likely to have double spikes, don't expect plants do perform their best the first year or so after purchase, they are adjusting to the less than perfect conditions.
With good culture you may get double spike on some of them in the coming years. I have one Phal that usually makes 2 spikes, and this year I managed to get 3 from it! But it has a lot of Phal equestris in it's background, making multiple spikes the norm for it.