When to pollinate a Phalaenopsis?

[Laserbeak]

I have pollen I collected yesterday from a couple dying flowers from one phal and it's in a folded up piece of paper in a jar in the refrigerator.

Just today I received the plant I am going to use as the mother plant. It is huge with two giant spikes and the first flower is just beginning to open. At what point and which flower should I try to pollinate? Should I try to pollinate the first one to open as soon as it opens fully or should I wait for a later one?

Also will pollinating one flower affect the others? I know the pollinated flower should drop soon afterwards leaving the fruit (seed pod) to grow.

Thanks a lot! I'm a total newbie at doing this seriously with the hope of getting seedlings.

[orchidsarefun]

there doesn't seem to be standard rules on pollination.
I have pollinated a flower successfully when it was 3 weeks old, generally though I wait until the pod-flower is at least a week old and fully open. Sometimes the successful pollination causes the remaining flowers to immediately drop and any unopened buds to blast, other times not. I just pollinated 2 flowers, the third bud blasted but the 4th bud is opening !
I have never been successful using stored ( refrigerated ) pollen, but many people have. I have used pollen successfully from a long-dead bloom that I found on the floor behind my stand......
If you want to enjoy the new blooms and seeing that you already have pollen in storage, I would wait and then choose the most recent bloom, and the oldest, to pollinate. Let us know what happens.

[Laserbeak]

Thanks orchidsarefun!

I was going to wait at least a couple weeks to allow the new mother plant to acclimate to its new surroundings. Plus I slipped it out of the plastic pot it came in and did a very gentle repotting into a Vanda-type wooden basket without disturbing the root ball much at all. I did that because I have horrible luck with phals in plastic, they all get root rot.

[Laserbeak]

My Queen is pregnant!

Of course there's still a lot of time to go until I have a ripe fruit seed pod, but getting to just this point was a bit iffy.

So I guess now I just have to treat it like royalty until the pod is ripe? Does anyone have special instructions for a plant growing a fruit?

[orchidsarefun]

care for the plant as you would normally, there is no special treatment required.
What happened to the other blooms - did they stay on the spike or say sayonara ?

[ValorieBoyer]

Originally Posted by Laserbeak

My Queen is pregnant!

Of course there's still a lot of time to go until I have a ripe fruit seed pod, but getting to just this point was a bit iffy.

So I guess now I just have to treat it like royalty until the pod is ripe? Does anyone have special instructions for a plant growing a fruit?

Be prepared for late night requests of ice cream with pickles.