Unhealthy dendrobiums

[reverseboB]

I am trying to grow some dendrobiums but they both have a white/silver scale on the leaves, for a lack of a better description. the larger dendro lost all its leaves last year but did grow a new stalk this year but it looks like I will lose those again to this disease. Anyone have a suggestion to control this?

bob

[Roberta]

First of all, do you know what kind of Dendrobiums these are? It's a huge genus, with multiple sections, each of which has different needs.

[Leafmite]

Are these Phal-type Dendrobiums, Nobile Dendrobiums or a different type? As said, that will really help as there are different needs for different types.

I grow the Phal-types and they like both lots of water and lots of air to the roots as well as to be kept warm (they are very intolerant of cooler temperatures). I have mine in lava rock/clear pots with holes and I water them until the roots turn green and then let them dry out before watering heavily again.
Some of the Phal-type Dendrobiums really resent their roots being disturbed. The advice with these is to only pot them up when new growth has begun but they are much happier if you never need to disturb their roots.

[estación seca]

That could be spider mite damage. Spray the entire plant, all surfaces, plus the pot and medium surface with either 70% alcohol or an insecticidal soap preparation. If you don't have either, run water over all plant surfaces and rub with your fingers.

[reverseboB]

Roberta and Leafmite,
I had to look it up. After owning the parent of these two babies for almost 10 years you should expect I would know. Anyway it is a Den. Woon leng so a phal type den. I have them as I was trying to propagate from a stem just to see if I could do it. I think I might need to water more or use something other than my green rain water (barrel full of algae). These are in mix of bark and lava rock. Since they are young I used the bark to try to make it hold more water. The adults are in lava/leca mixes or mounts.
Estancion, Ill take a closer look. I am not seeing mites but will check on it.
bob

---------- Post added at 03:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:04 PM ----------

I took a closer look and there was something on the leaves too small to identify so I have washed them off and will check on them every day.

[estación seca]

Do you mean a piece of mature stem including the rhizome, the root zone? Or were these pieces that grew out of the upper parts of older stems and already had roots?

[reverseboB]

I took leaveless stems and cut them to 2-3 nodes long and placed them in a lidded plastic container with moist media. Took several months but they started to grow roots and stems. I waited for the roots to get to about 2 inches (5 cm) then planted in the pots you see in my first post. So no Kiekis or rhizome to start them.

[estación seca]

You got very lucky!