Cattleyas
Depending on the sub-specie, Cattleyas can bloom during fall or winter, is good to use some bloom booster fertilizers to achieve best flowers. If your plants bloomed in the spring, you can use plain water rather than fertilizer, you can start using fertilizer again when they start growing again in the spring. Make sure of get rid of any insects and fungus. A good tip to take advantage of light and achieve better results is to remove all chemical residues, to do this you can “wash” the leaves with lemon juice, this will help a lot in the photosynthesis.
Dendrobiums
Do not be scared if your Dendrobiums lose all their leaves in the fall, it is not a plant disease; it’s just their behavior during this time. Other subspecies will lose some of the leaves, others will lose some of their leaves on back bulbs; but you shouldn’t be losing all the leaves on old pseudobulbs. If this is happening, it means that your dendrobium have some kind of fungus. You can spray them with Consan or Physan. This will not kill the plant, clean the plant and make sure that the new growths are staked properly.
Phalaenopsis (Butterfly Orchids or Moth Orchids )
These are one of the easiest species of orchids to make them bloom; you should know that they need between 2 and 4 weeks of cool temperatures during the nights in order to initiate spikes. As the weather gets cool in your location, let the plants get temperatures around 60°F-70°F at night. Keep an eye on at the bottom of the plant or below one of the bottom leaves. You can start staking the little branch as soon as it reaches 6 inches (15 cm), hold it and try to keep the plant in the same position in relation to light source or you will have a twisted look to the flowering.
Watering and Fertilizing during fall
During the Fall and Spring, orchids needs less water, if you keep watering and fertilizing your orchids during this time just as you do in summer, this will cause damages to the roots and the plants. Less heat and less natural light hours means less water. Check the pots, mark in calendar the last time you watered and fertilized, change the schedule when the pots gets dry, but don’t get your orchids without water at all.
Some Dendrobiums, Cychnoches and other orchids will lose their leaves during the fall or winter months. As leaves dies, stop watering, if you keep watering your orchids you will get rot plants, check that your plant have the enough humidity during this time. Growth will start back in spring, so you can start to water your new plants again.
