You have set yourself a tough assignment if you really want to re-bloom a Den. nobile in North Alberta. You obviously have been doing something right but probably not enough of that something to see blooms this (next) year. What is very likely is that the present setup you have will not be enough to ever accomplish re-blooming that dend. Maybe if you give us more details of exactly what you are working with I (we) can give better advice.

H

There are a couple of threads worth reading...
Dens cutting off water on page 2 and
Den. nobile still on page 1.
Your problem is that it needs a winter of sorts with high light, otherwise it will never flower.
The sort of daily "winter" temp. range that you need is say
Nights 40 - 50 F
Days 60-70F and about 6 hours of filtered sunshine per day.
Over to the Northern growers.

Arthur is right. This plant needs high light and cool temps. These are tricky plants to flower if your conditions are not 'just right.'

Jane

I want to thank you all very much for helping me with my Dend.

Howard: I will have some better details on light, temps, humidity, etc for you in a few days.

Arthur: Thank you for the threads and the "winter" temp guide. They we very helpful in getting my brain going.

How many days worth of "winter" conditions does this plant need on average?

I am trying to figure out how to use parts of my climate to my advantage.
I may be able to replicate those temps outdoors during my late summer/early fall. When some have their plants out in October/November I might need to have mine out in August/September to simulate "winter.

I have no end of light in the summer. Winter here is a different story.
Humidity is a concern. It is very dry here. I can control humidity in the house easily enough but outdoors is another matter entirely. (Maybe it is time for that greenhouse)

Sorry, I am thinking out loud. :)

I understand that I have set myself a near impossible task. My main goal is to keep the plant happy and healthy. If I can manage to get some blooms a few years down the road I will be surprised and ecstatic.
I am willing to give it a try though. I enjoy the challenge. That is what gardening is all about.
And I do understand that it is going to take time before I may see any results.

I am going to go do some more research, put together a detailed account of the conditions I have to work with (natural and supplemental) and I will get back to you and see if we can come up with some suggestions and opinions.

Thank you again guys.
BlackWyld

Not an impossible task, perhaps a challenge. Had a look at the recent ancestors of Den. Oriental Smile on the RHS Register of orchid hybrids. They have all been produced by Yamamoto who tried to reduce the need for extreme chilling for the plant to produce flowers. So you might not need the degree of temperature drop that occurs here every year.

While the temperature drop is being experienced, light levels should be high and watering reduced and the plants are not subject to high humidity.

You need some of the under lights experts who have success with these plants to give you some more clues.

BlackWyld - Cool curtains! I don't grow Nobiles, but if you haven't run across the Baker cultural sheets, they might help. Growers can't replicate the habitats the Bakers document, but they give you an idea of ranges for different times of the year.

One question I have is about drainage in your blue pot, which looks glazed. If there aren't slits in the side (some glazed orchid pots have those) or extra holes in the bottom, the bark mix may not be able to dry quickly enough.

This is my first winter w/ other types of Dens, and time will tell if the living room, which goes down to about 56F at night and not much higher during the day, will be cool enough for them to rebloom.

By the way - I just got a cutting of one of the larger hoyas.

Whitecat8

Here is a link that might be useful: Dendrobium Culture - Nobiles

You can't grow/flower this plant in the same light as your other plants. It needs very high light in winter. It appears over-potted. Dens like to have their 'feet tight.' They also don't like their roots disturbed. Always better to underpot dens. If you don't have a sunny window, get a clamp light or floor lamp and put in a strong CFL and shine it on the plant over winter. I flower them indoors in a SW window with octopus floor lamp. They stay cool all winter near the drafty window.

Jane

Sorry for the long wait guys, I work a weird shift.

Arthurm: Give me a challenge! I love a challenge! Hehe!
The more advice you guys give me the more excited I get. Plants are such a joy. I love learning from them.
I am really glad that the Dend doesnt need high humidity at this time of year because that was one of my worries. The prospect that I may not need a greater degree of chilling is comforting as well.

WhiteCat8: Congrats on the hoya! What type of hoya you get? Have you posted on the Hoya Forum? I have been working but I will go and check it out.

I have seen the Baker sheets mentioned a lot here and haven't seen them yet so I will look into that tonight.

I am not proud of the pot but it is my only option until I get some proper orchid pots. There are extra holes in the bottom for drainage. The glazing has actually helped me a lot because it is so dry here I had to water the thing constantly. I have it in a fairly coarse medium which is helping as well. Time will tell. I haven't actually ever seen clay pots with slits in the sides, just the ones with fancy holes. I am not a huge fan of plastic.
I am trying to find some reasonably priced orchid pots with smallish holes in the sides. There seem to be so many different styles of orchid pots. IÂll have to find the right mix of medium and pot to match my climate and my plants needs.

Jane: Thank you for the clarification :)
I am going to try to get a slightly smaller pot for it once I find a good Orchid source in Canada. And I will re-pot it in the spring.
The Dend originally came in a 5" plastic pot. The entire pot was one mass of roots that were starting to spiral out (top and bottom) because they had nowhere else to go. There was hardly any medium left in the pot and what was left was extremely decayed. The main stalk is over two feet tall and the whole thing would fall over if I didnÂt have the whole thing propped.
The new pot is 6". I read in a few places that when you re-pot you should allow for 2 years growth. I think I have overestimated what 2 years growth would be.

The CFL light is an excellent idea and I have never thought of it before. It seems like such a better option compared to regular tube fluorescents. And I just found a thread here talking about CFLs which has been very informative.
I am off to search my local stores for CFLs tomorrow and if I canÂt find ones with strong enough wattage here then I will order some off of the net.

I have been talking with my landlord about finding a cool place to put the Dend for the nighttime portion of its "winter" period. (They have been fairly "tolerant" of my plant addiction so far)
Grow-lights are the way to go for me.
Putting it by a window during winter here makes me nervous. When winter temps here can drop to -40, it just scares me having a plant close to any of the windows. And most of our heating vents sit underneath the windows so it would get blasted with hot air on one side and cold on the other.

What we were considering is the basement of the house. It is heated but the floors are concrete and quite cool. We played around with a thermometer and found that if I use a box that has been insulated (with a blanket or something) the temp inside the box will drop to about 50F over the course of a few hours and then stay fairly consistent.
Extremely crude I know ;)
But I wonder if it would work; put it to bed in the basement at night and move it to my grow room during the day with the fluorescents and a couple of 85w CFLs.
Am I crazy?

I guess we will see. ï

Regards,
BlackWyld

Hi Blackwyld: Re 85w CFL, make sure you have the right electric "accessories" (socket / ballast rating etc) - apparently these things can get quite hot.
Light thread here alvin

Thank you for the thread Alvin. I had heard that before and am a little worried about it.

I am taking my landlord out with me when I go light shopping.
He has little clue when it comes to plants but loves to help with any of the electrical aspects. And I don't have much experience with electrical so I enjoy the help.

Not to mention that he is much more agreeable with my little plant obsession if I include him in my projects.
When we are done, I'll look at all the happy plants and smile while he would be standing beside me grinning proudly at his light and shelving setup; I don't think he even sees the plants.

I am storing up all this CFL info I am finding here, we are going to go over it together and then figure out our plan of attack.

BW

Dens want to be dry. If you water every day in that size pot, the roots will rot. That is why it was in a small pot with almost nothing in it. Their roots need air around them. Dens will always be too tall for any pot. It can be in a plasic pot inside a fancy pot. Keeps them from falling over

With that size pot and all the bark, it will take a long time for that to dry out. It should dry out before the next watering.

I'm not sure what you mean about a box? The plant needs to be kept cool all the time. Not just at night. If you put it in a box in a cool room with no air movement, you will get rot. Best if you could find a cool place in your house to keep the plant and put the lights over it. These can be tricky plants to grow for a beginner. But I am sure as you research the plant, you will find a way to manage its needs.

Jane

Yamamoto nobiles do not need the severe chilling that the regular nobiles need. I dry my Yamamoto nobiles out for about a month, say the whole month of November, or from Thanksgiving to after Christmas, then resume watering again, only giving baby sips. They do, however, like Jane says, need constant coolness and bright light during the day.

If I could comment on your pot - beautiful, but big enough for four plants - dendrobiums really like to be very tightly potted to bloom happily.
Most of the nobile crosses now, the advice is to cut *back* on water and withhold fertilizer during the winter months - and I have found that it works perfectly.
The bright light/sun - well, that is a problem!
My deciduous and semi-deciduous dendrobiums get coolER temperatures in the winter, but here we will still get shorts-and-sandals days in December and January.
You know you're from south Louisiana when you turn on the AC on Christmas day so you can light a fire...so I don't think the cooling is that critical. High light, no fertilizer, that's the key.
Cheers - Nancy

PS: As Jane says, dendrobium roots like to be very tight, and they resent being disturbed. When I repot my dens I just "pot up," that is, just move them to a slightly larger pot without disturbing the roots. I don't know where all the medium goes, but there doesn't seem to be much left by the time my plants need larger pots. Since you recently repotted, your plant may not bloom this year. Keep your fingers crossed.

"Thank you for the thread Alvin. I had heard that before and am a little worried about it." An 85W CFL is an absolute pussycat of a bulb. A 75W incandescent gets about as hot, in fact the actual bulb portion of the incandescent will get very much hotter than any individual part of the CFL. You buy incandescents for a buck apiece and stick them in light fixtures and don't think about them after that. Lamp shades with cloth drapery and plastic fixtures of all kinds. Give CFL of any reasonable wattage the same benefit of the doubt.

Aside from winter light being important and notwithstanding the need for cool temps I want to observe that cool temps are needed both day and night. Shuttling is therefore unwise not only because we can rarely do it consistently enough to make it worth it but because if one can work out the logistics for creating the low temps at night the temp rise afforded by the lights will likely raise the daytemp in the exact same location just enough to be workable without a shuttle necessary.

H