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Need to chill Doritaenopsis?

16 years ago

I have a Doritaenopsis (Dtps. Tinny Amethyst) and have been following the posts about chilling Phals to 50-55 at night for 2 weeks so they will set spikes.

Do I need to do this to my Dtps also since it is a Phal cross?

Thanks.

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Comments (12)

mehitabel
16 years ago
Hi, catts. D. Tinny Amethyst is the cross of D. Minho Princess x D. Happy Valentine. It averages less than 2% Doritis, and over 81% "soft" phals like amabilis, sanderiana, equestris etc. So its a lot more phal than doritis.

Treat it like a phal.
jane__ny
16 years ago
Hey, Mehitabel - never knew all that - maybe I should post the names of mine.

I just love all you 'research people.'

Jane
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mehitabel
16 years ago
Hey, Jane. I spend lots of happy hours with my Orchidwiz. Keeps me from watering all the time :)

PS I'll be happy to look your orchids up for you, just tell me what they are.
jane__ny
16 years ago
You are so sweet. I have one which has given me a problem since day 1. It's from Normans and came packed in hard sphag and had rot. Seemed to recover, but last winter I think it got chilled being near a window and almost died. It has sat all summer and is finally sending out a root. Tried high light, warmth, cool, etc. It has equestris (which I never had a problem with), so I can't figure out how to make it happy -
Phal. Little Steve 'Brother' (P. Steven Ai x P. equestris).

No new roots, one beginning of a leaf and stall. Just sits until I noticed a root starting.

You could email me so as not to take up Board space.

Thanks,
Jane
cattsandducks
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks, Mehitabel. I will treat it like a Phal and place it with the others.

BTW, is the Orchid Wiz a good source of info for a small, orchid hobbyist - the price is a bit steep, but I AM hooked on orchids!
mehitabel
16 years ago
Catts, I love Orchidwiz. But I agree, the price is steep. I couldn't bring myself to spring for it for nearly a year, and then my husband sort of got it for me as a gift. It was hard to judge how I would use it without actually having access to it.

I hafta tellya, it will feed your obsession, but you can find out so much about the orchid *before* you buy it. eg, someone I *think* it would be worthwhile.

EG, someone was asking here about Lc Rojo blooming time. On orchidwiz, you could look up Lc Rojo, find its parents. Then you could look up the awards (there are 12), where you would get a description of what the very best ones look like, how many flowers at once from the very best growing, the size of the flower (Rojo has small flowers), when awarded (ie when they bloom), etc etc.

Sometimes you can see a picture, or pictures of it compared to the parents.

You can also look up the % of different species in it on average. This is useful with complex hybrids, eg Blc, where it may have more B, or more L, or more C in it, and that will give you a bit of idea about growing and what the flower might look like.

The fault of it is that it doesn't have pictures of everything, but he has assembled all the public information on every orchid. Very enterprising.

Well, it may not be everybody's thing, but I enjoy it. I'm like Norm in "Cheers"-- just like to know things :)
cattsandducks
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for the review of Orchid Wiz, Mehitabel - Santa may get some hints for his list this year!

Maybe this database will help with those "impulse" purchases (See it, like it, buy it!!)
highjack
16 years ago
I'll second mehitabel's recommendation for Orchid Wiz. Being able to take some of the guess work out of culture is a big advantage. mehitable gave the info regarding the small percentage of Dori. in the plant and all of the species in it. There is a chart telling what the percentage of hot growers, inter. growers, cool growers in the pedigree along with the same info regarding light requirements.

And pictures! to keep you drooling. If the plant is awarded, usually the pic is the official pic taken the day it won. It also gives you all the measurements of petal size, # of blooms per spike. It lets you know if your cultural requirements are comparable to the awarded plant.

It would make a great Christmas present.

Brooke
spiced_ham
16 years ago
I really do not recommend chilling phal hybrids. Most (chances are, none) of the background species are not cool growers and in nature
never see temps as cool as we keep out homes in winter.

http://www.hrt.msu.edu/faculty/Runkle/Orchid/Articles/Growing_the_Best_Phalaenopsis_Part_3.pdf
mehitabel
16 years ago
Very interesting set of articles, ham. Thanks. Covers a lot of issues that people fret over.

If you go to msu.edu and put "The Orchid Grower" into the search function it will take you to the (four) articles.

Worth reading.
mehitabel
16 years ago
After reading the articles, it's clear that the *word* chilling is being used in two different senses by the original poster and the author of the articles.

In the articles, the word "cooling period" is used to describe a # of weeks at 63-79, and "chilling" is used to describe damage that is done to a phal when temps go below 50 even for a short period.

The caution about letting temps get too cold is probably well taken. Especially when the "cooling" is being done by leaving them outside on autumn nights.

So a cooling period is recommended for growing and developing spikes-- day temps below 82, nights above 60.

This is very hard to get for as long as several weeks either in nature or indoors. Fortunately some specialists claim mature phals will bloom without the cooldown if mature enough.

I don't know. I'll definitely post about it someday if I ever figure out how to get them all to bloom when I want them to.
spiced_ham
16 years ago
Note that the cooling off brings the temps down into the room temperature range (where most of us grow out plants any way,) not what any of us would call cool.

Greenhouses in temperate regions get the change at some point in the late summer/fall so there isn't much to worry about blooms, but the big nurseries in the sub tropics do have to worry about bringing the plants down into the 70s for good production.

The trick seems to be having the temp right just after the spike shows up for more flowers, I usually don't notice the spike before it is already out of the 8" range

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