Should I water or not?

[mook1178]

is it really ok to cut the leaves and force dormancy?

I'm not sure I want to do that, just curious. I'll most likely just let them do their thing.

Oh if curious they are the Ctsm. tenobrosum x Ctsm. calosum seedlings from SVO. It will be neat to see some differences from the same cross.

[SouthPark]

Originally Posted by mook1178

is it really ok to cut the leaves and force dormancy? I'm not sure I want to do that, just curious. I'll most likely just let them do their thing.

Hard to say - about the cutting of leaves to force dormancy. Enough testing on a range of these plants could help answer this. But that sort of testing should also involve having accurate details of the growing conditions too - eg. temperature and other quantities, and media being used, and watering rate/quantity/schedule.

For my very tropical region here, I just back right-off on the watering, and water very lightly. Enough for the roots to get water, and the spaghnum stays lightly moist only - absolutely no waterlogging allowed. And I maintain decent air-flow all around - natural gentle breeze ..... but sometimes can be fairly breezy too, with leaves flopping around in the breeze.

When I do the above - all the leaves eventually become yellow - sometimes the last leaves can take ages to yellow (eg. a few weeks or more). But they eventually do. And they then do the usual thing and dry up to the point where they naturally fall off (or the slightest movement disconnects them from the joint).

I stop watering when those last leaves begin to yellow, and then just leave the orchid (in the pot) in the shade.

For your case, I would just keep very lightly watering the roots/media (while not allowing temperatures to drop to undesirable levels).

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by mook1178

is it really ok to cut the leaves and force dormancy?

I'm not sure I want to do that, just curious. I'll most likely just let them do their thing.

Oh if curious they are the Ctsm. tenobrosum x Ctsm. calosum seedlings from SVO. It will be neat to see some differences from the same cross.

The shriveling doesn't look bad to me. If you got these from SVO, why not send Fred Clarke an email asking about cutting leaves... and let the rest of us know what he says. Unless he's traveling, he's usually very responsive.

[Clawhammer]

My thinking on the recommendation is that it probably doesn't matter much either way and it is almost February. I like my plants to enter dormancy plump.

For what it is worth I just received an order from SVO and it appeared the leaves were cut prior to shipping (stalks still yellow and green at the top). It was probably to facilitate shipping but I can't imagine SVO would do that if it hurt the development of the plant in any way at this late stage.

Interested to hear what Fred has to say.