Cutting back my phal spike
 

Hi there, i'm new to this great forum and this is my first post, i had a phal gave to me over easter as a gift, i've managed to keep the same flowers on it up to this point but now they have fell off, and the spike is starting to go yellow, when is the best time to cut it back and where abouts on the spike do you recommend? i fertilize my plant every now and again with baby bio orchid feed.

i've attached some pics of my plant

thank you in advance.

Hi en3rmax and welcome to Orchid Board :welcome:

There is lots of different advice on cutting Phal spikes. I think Ray gives good advice on this link and he also talks about the different options.

Spike Cutting

That having been said, I usually cut them right back as close to the plant as I can without damaging it.

At the least you should cut off the dead/yellow section as that will not produce any new flowers.

Welcome!
If the spike is turning yellow you won't get an side spikes off of it, so you can cut it off at the base, where it comes out of the plant. Don't cut too close, or you might risk injuring the plant with the scissors.

Thank you for the quick reply RosieC, does my plant look healthy enough? as this is my first time looking after one, i find them really interesting.

This is a great help to me, does the plant take the goodness from the spike back into it's self? if so should i let it go yellow just above the bottom node then cut it off above the node?

From the leaf and a bit I can see in the pic it looks healthy enough. Maybe a pic of the whole plant would help tell on that.

I'm not sure if it takes back the goodness. I usually cut them off before they turn brown anyway, but once they turn brown there is no chance of it flowering from that spike again so it may as well be removed.

Sometimes the spike will turn brown near the top but stay green lower down.

Sorry RosieC been trying to add thumbnails but not got it working yet for some reason, ive attached the pic's of my phal.

Thank you

Oh yeah, I've seen those pics before but must have missed them when I came back.

The leaves look good and healthy. Shiny/waxy looking which is good.

It looks like you have a clear inner plastic pot with an outer pot. That's good. The outer pot also looks like the sort I like with a space below where the inner pot sits. That's great to allow the medium to drain and not sit in water.

Not sure how much you know so I'm going to give you some watering tips, sorry if you already know them.

It is important to have a pot with drainage and if possible a clear pot. It looks like you have that. Let the roots go silvery before you water. Check their colour down near the bottom as well as at the top (that's why a clear pot is good). When you do water you want to get it thoroughly wet and then let it drain. Some people run water through the pot until it runs out the bottom, some people dunk it in water for 15min or so. Personally I do a bit of both, sometimes one way and sometimes the other.

If you fertilise it's best done 'weakly weekly'. On another post recently Ray had a way of calculating the strength you should use but I can't find it again now. I go by the advice on the bottle. If it advises monthly use then use it quater strength weekly, if it advises weekly use then use it as directed.

An important thing when fertilising is to flush through with clean water every 4th week. When doing this I always run water through the pot to water it rather than dunking. The aim is to rince out the salt buildup from the fertiliser. I'm not sure whether it looks like there is a white salt buildup on the surface of your bark so if you have not flushed it through at all I would do that next time you water.

The last thing (sorry I've rambled on :biggrin:) is that many people like to repot as soon as they buy orchids so that you know the medium is OK. Even if you don't do that you should repot every couple of years when growing in bark and you should completely remove/replace the medium when you do it. You don't need to change pot size unless you can't easily get the roots back in the pot, the point of repotting is to replace the medium before it compacts rather than to go up a pot size as you would when repotting other types of plant.

Don't make the mistake I made of thinking 'I'm just a beginner the garden center bark will do for me'. I nearly killed my first two Phals before I realised that it was the bark I had repotted them in.

This UK based website sells good bark. I've had sucess with repotting using it.

Orchid Accessories - www.orchidaccessories.co.uk

Well that has turned in to a long post, whoops. I hope at least some of it was helpful.:biggrin:

Thank you very much RosieC, My phal's plastic pot does sit on a ledge inside the clay pot, i've had it since easter, i wait for the roots to go silver then put the plastic pot in the sink and pour tepid water through it till it's all wet then allow it to drain for 15 mins and remove any drips of water out of it's crown with an ear bud, then put it back into it's clay pot.

Sounds like you're doing exactly the right thing. That'll be why the leaves look so healthy. Keep up the good work :Tup: