Trouble with Phal spikes
 

Hi everyone! I am new here and joined so I could pick your brains for solutions to my phalaenopsis troubles. I have a Phal that began growing a spike in late January/early February which I thought was late but-it's a spike. The spike came from the same side as last year's but lower. So low it's coming out of the media. I thought that was strange. The spike grew to maybe 3 inches tall and stopped with a single bud that has curled under. Not very impressive compared to last year's spike that was a foot tall with 6-8 buds.

The Phal is in a 5 inch pot with healthy leaves and roots. I grow under lights and I'm concerned my lighting isn't sufficient. I have 2 T5 fluorescents on for ~12 hours in a plant "cabana" but I don't believe they are high output fluorescents. Temps inside the cabana are about 80 degrees most days and dropped to about 60 degrees at night during the winter. Now that the weather is improving, temps at night are a bit higher.

I have included a picture of my sad little spike that I hope comes through. I am open to suggestions as to how I can improve my growing habits to produce more spectacular blooms.

Lots of healthy aerial roots, green leaves, plump bud. All looks good...though I was all twisted up with my head cocked sideways ;) .

Do you have photos of your phal in bloom last time? Is is a NOID or does it have a name? Do you fertilize?

If you bought it with multiple spikes, don't forget that growers/ nurseries have perfect orchid conditions: light, temp, humidity. Trying to get the same out of your orchid at home can be difficult. Not impossible, but challenging. I've bought many a phal with two spikes that only produced one for me the next blooming. Don't fret. It's an accomplishment to get it to rebloom! :)

Welcome!

That's better than nothing!

Your growing conditions are probably not as good as at the commercial grower. They have to get the best looking plants out the door as fast as possible, because zeit ist geld, so they aim to provide the very best lighting, heat, watering and fertilizing. We hobbyists do the best we can. Once we learn more about our plants, they look better and better all the time.

Here is a partial picture from last year. Sorry, I'm afraid it's going to be sideways again. I haven't figured out how to rotate them yet. The tag says Phalaenopsis Sogo Grape Fireball.

Oh, it's lovely!!! I'd be pretty happy to have one bloom of that! :D Nice choice!

Very pretty! (And if you figure out how to make your pictures right side up, please tell me how to do it, lol!)

I use Imgur to hold mine, and there are controls in there to rotate the image. If you look thru the controls for your site if you can, there may be similar ones there.

I've been taking the pictures with my phone, then emailing them to myself; then I upload them from my desktop. The thing is, I've tried rotating it first, but it still showed up wrong in the post.:scratchhead:

This also happened to me when using pictures from my phone. I asked about it way back when and got some answers. If I remember correctly seems a pretty standard problem.

---------- Post added at 09:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 AM ----------

Here. I found this:

Ok... I'll have to give that a try! It is an iphone so hopefully that will work.

Just opened one, and lo and behold, it was sideways in Microsoft Office picture manager... I guess the iPhone is to blame, lol! Here's a test pic of one of my favorite NoID Phals:

Can you post a picture of the plant now? From the side and from above- its easier when looking at the whole plant, to see whats wrong, if any at all.

Looks really nice, like the flowers :)

Both are beautiful. I just think some time things happen and we don't know why. I have a phal that I have had a few years and have re-bloomed it a couple of times. This year it had it's spike and after it dropped off it's blooms the stem didn't yellow so I didn't cut it off. It started to put out another bud but when it opened it was upside down and retarded. I have no idea why and so I just cut the whole thing off. We will see how it comes out next time.