Getting my orchids to re-bloom

Pete.8

Last year I bought 2 moth orchids that were in flower.
They finished flowering around July this year and I moved them to a cooler, north-facing bedroom.
A few weeks ago it was getting too cold in there so moved them to my north-facing bathroom windowsill.
I water/feed them every week or so and they look very healthy.

I'd read somewhere that they need about 6 weeks to start producing new blooms, but mine show no signs after 5 months.
Is there something else I need to do to get some flowers?
Thanks

bertrand-mabel

We do grow some of the Phalaenopsis orchids. This time of the year they are watered a lot less and not fed. When yours finished flowering was the flower spike brown and withered or was it still green? If green then it shouldn't be cut off as new flowers will come from this.

Also when buying plants they are often forced into flowering and yours only finished in July so probably is getting used to its new home.

One of ours is only just starting to bloom again after many months of nothing. We do sit them on gravel trays that have rain water in them to keep the humidity up.

KT53

What has worked for me, and you will find people with many variants on how to treat them, is to cut the old stems down to within a couple of nodes of the bottom.  They will eventually produce new growth and flowers.  I've known the regrowth to take anything from a couple of months to a year.

Pete.8

Thanks @bertrand-mabel
The flower spike on one of them slowly went completely brown, so I cut it off.
On the other one I cut off the dead flowering spike down to the next node and it then produced a baby at the top!
I cut that off and potted it up a few months ago and that's doing fine.
So the stem is a bit shorter still now, but still green with a few nodes, so hopefully they'll flower - I just thought it wound happen a bit faster. Maybe they'll go with the flow and get some buds in Spring 🤞
I'm guessing the bathroom windowsill is a bit chilly for them now, so I'll move them to a south facing spare bedroom which will be a bit warmer. It's where I dry my washing, so reasonably humid.

Pete.8

Cheers @KT53 - sounds like I'm being impatient - not like me at all 🤣
Never grown them before so getting used to their habits.

bertrand-mabel

Don't have them over a heater. They wont like that at all.

Pete.8

They're now on a table set back about 3ft from a small south-facing window.
It'll be a bit warmer in there and brighter.

Is temperature a factor in getting them to rebloom, or do they just need a rest?
I'll hold back on the feeding too until I see signs of something happening. 

Thanks for your advice

bédé

I have several of the smaller flowered Phalaenopsis orchids that, after a long season, finished flowering in end Nov, and have now quite long green shoots.  My ones that finished flowering about July are no more advance.

North East facing window, on the window ledge, tempertaure currently 16ºC but had to move them briefly this summer when the sun-strength was too much.   I follow the remove-all-of-the-old-stem school.  It's neater.

Oh, BTW, 3ft from a small window is nothing to us troglodytes, but is massive to a jungle dwelling epiphyte.  They are supposed to need light.

Uff

Hell's bells and buckets o' blood, I'm going to have to look that up @bede, I'm only a pleb 

I've had a Phalaenopsis in flower since last May. After the last flower I put in in the cool dining room but I noticed the other day it has 4 blooms and a bud so I brought it out again. However, I bought a pot of small blooms from Homebase just over 2 weeks ago and it's finished flowering already. All their pots were standing on a watering mat that was swimming in water. 
I'm going to leave the stems that are green and see what happens. 

Pete.8

bédé said:

I have several of the smaller flowered Phalaenopsis orchids that, after a long season, finished flowering in end Nov, and have now quite long green shoots.  My ones that finished flowering about July are no more advance.

North East facing window, on the window ledge, tempertaure currently 16ºC but had to move them briefly this summer when the sun-strength was too much.   I follow the remove-all-of-the-old-stem school.  It's neater.

Oh, BTW, 3ft from a small window is nothing to us troglodytes, but is massive to a jungle dwelling epiphyte.  They are supposed to need light.

Thanks, but they seem fine in the spare bedroom. The window is not small, small - it's about 6ft wide and faces due south.
It's so bright in there I hang a coat in the middle of the curtain pole to reduce the amount of light, but it doesn't shade the orchids.
Temps in that room are about 16-20c atm

msqingxiao

We were given an orchid in Feb this year and the flowers lasted for a couple of months I remember. I fed it through summer, together with my other orchids, but haven't got time to tidy it up. Recently I noticed new stems growing out of the old stems. My two other orchids are sending out new stems too, after staying quiet for almost a year...Though one of them started producing new stems from late Oct but still has no flowers yet!

I think the trick someone mentioned previously was the day-night temperature difference. It can trigger flowering if the temperature difference is big. Two of my orchids are in a south-facing room used as office, warm during the day (either by heating or by sunshine, 16-20C) but not heated (around 10C I guess) at night. One orchid is getting decent light on our bookshelf but the other (in pic below) is not, tucked away behind another plant.