Staking my Phal: Am I doing it right?
 

:hello

I've got two Phalænopsis hybrids, a fuchsia one and a white one, both bought in bloom at the 'Swedish furniture giant' last year, and both in spike now :blushing:

These are my first orchids to bring into flower in, oh, 15 years? So I'm pretty excited. Even though they're just cheap, unidentified phals, they're MY cheap, unidentified phals. Y'all know how it is :biggrin:

All right, so I wanted to check with you wonderful, kind, knowledgeable, and generous OB experts to see if my experiment in Staking 101 is ok. :thanx:

The phals sit in a windowsill and don't get turned so they have really grown their leaves in the direction of the light.
When their spikes started to develop, they wanted to do the same thing, so I turned the plants 180° to get the spike to grow away from the rest of the plant.
Now that they have some length to them, I fit them through these little loop holders (as you can see in the pictures) and have turned them back around, leaves facing the light again.

The hypothesis is that from now on I will be able to move the holder upwards as the spike grows. I also have a clip on standby if I need more support.

So: does it look ok? I noticed that the plastic loop has left some teeny grooves in the soft green spike, but I'm guessing that it can handle it without turning black and rotting off or some other horrible thing. :shock:

Photos:
http://www.orchidboard.com/community...GP0291edit.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...GP0295edit.JPG

It looks fine to me. As long as it isn't tight around the spike. Don't use a tight clip or tie on the spike until it's full grown. Anything loose like that is fine. I usually don't stake phal spikes until they're much longer but there's nothing wrong with doing that. Congratulations on the new spike.