Also looking for images of what 1, 2, 4week, 2m, 3m, 6m, 1year growth looks like.

Those look like continuing spike branches on an old spike to me. With a keiki you will begin to see leaves typically, not buds. I've never used keiki paste though. My keikis are completely unintentional!

Not sure what you mean by growth at those times? Growth for the mother plant? Growth of a keiki? Orchids are so variable that what one person experiences with growth maybe very atypical for someone else. Growth is dependent on climate, conditions, how it's potted etc.

New flower buds. I have had the chance to see Keikies forming and they don't look like this. These are new shoots that will send buds on them.

Oh, I mean just typical growth stages of keikis, a photo of the bud and how it grows. Trying to see the difference between spike and keiki growth.

I noticed some of the tips of the new growths have a rounded/bulby shape, others have a very angular somewhat triangle look.

Can I try apply hormone paste to these spikes way later on when they've flowered or will buds only be on the main stem from the base of plant?

Will a keiki grow straight away as leaves and be shorter than the stem at 1 month? Or will the keiki make a small growth and then after a lil while, have leaves "open up" a lil similar to how frangipani leaves open?

"The flower spike must be cut leaving
at least three nodes [ undeveloped buds - there may be more than 3 inches
below the cut. The bract surrounding the upper bud should be removed
carefully so as to not damage the bud and a little paste [ less than a
match head in size ] is smeared on to the exposed bud to just completely
cover it. The same procedure is then followed with each of the lower
buds.

After about 4 - 8 weeks, the top bud
should have developed into an inflorescence about 1.5cm long. This may
also happen to the lower nodal buds although shoots [ keikis J may
develop instead of inflorescences. About one third, [ 0.5 cm] of the
apex of these new inflorescences must now be cut off and further paste
applied to the remaining part and to its base , again covering thinly.
Several shoots then develop with roots forming naturally as the shoots
mature. The third [top] nodal bud is usually the bud from which plants
commence and grow most quickly and after 6 months they may be large
enough to be detached from the parent plant and commence growth in a pot
on their own."

This was the advice given on the Keiki paste product page. Is it ok to snip the tip as they say and apply new paste? And If the tip is snipped, the bud should still grow and at least flower if it doesn't turn into a keiki?

Can I ask why you want to encourage a keiki? I have 2 that I don't want! So I can't imagine encouraging to be honest, LOL.

Here is the keiki that brought me to this forum in the first place:

And here is the keiki that I have growing now - as you can see, it does not look at all like flower buds, but a weird leaf formation where there never are leaves EXCEPT when it keikis. I don't expect it to look like the above keiki for 6 months or more. Orchids are SLOW growers!

Orchids cost $30 each here and I want some more. I have hundreds of plants because I like to brighten up the yard for the positive mood uplift.

Thanks for the pics.

Where is here?

Far North Queensland, Australia.

So this phal orchid finished flowering, I trimmed the stem back, added the hormone to the nodes and a few weeks later I get these.

I did all the hormones at the same time, so the previous image was a different orchid. Is this a keiki? It looks very different to the other growths I've seen, all the others get quite long in a few weeks but this one is about 2 months or so. There is another one below it that looks similar.

Any idea what this will be? It was on the first orchid I posted.

This is the original orchid I posted, I trimmed the flower stem, applied more hormone as per the instructions the keiki paste had. Any idea what is growing on the side? There are 3 growths arranged in nearly a triangle.

Those growths whatever they are do not look like normal Phalaenopsis growths. Perhaps they will tend "normal" as they enlarge. I have never heard of anyone using hormones to promote Keikis around here. If, heaven forbid, I built a Phalaenopsis House. I would Buy Flasks of baby plants and grow them on. Much cheaper than buying in-bloom plants and if you buy seedlings (raised from seed) you will get variations in colours, shape and size as they flower.

Maybe Contact Cairns Orchid Society for info. re Phalaenopsis Sources, Culture and so on. North Queensland orchid society

Ah ok. Do you know what is quicker to flower, seeds or keikis? I am pretty impatient...

I second Arthur's suggestion of joining an Orchid Society. Also, Phals might not be the best choice given your climate since they prefer lower light and need cooler temps to spike.

I get that orchids are expensive. I'm cheap when it comes to buying plants too! I have found that subscribing to online vendors to be alerted to sales, following eBay and being aware of local greenhouses that have seasonal sales to be good resources for different varieties of orchids at good prices. Just by checking my local Orchid Society's website, I found my way to a local sale where I acquired 7 different varieties of orchids at excellent prices.

I have more Phals than I know what to do with as a friend who is also a florist discovered my interest in orchids and now donates all their past-bloom plants to me. If they don't go to me, they go in the bin, so I rehabilitate them. Maybe make friends with a florist? I don't think you'll get what you're looking for with trying to force keikis - particularly if you are impatient! Many orchids take several years to reach flowering maturity.

archades, I'm going to jump in here and offer a suggestion or two. I am going to suggest that your keiki paste, whatever it is, apparently has your orchid plants so confused that they don't know what to produce on the nodes of those bloom spikes.

The three photos above this show flower spike nodes that have what appears to be undifferentiated tissue growths. The process has probably changed since I was actively involved in tissue culturing orchids, but we would take these growth buds and put them in a jar with a liquid nutrient solution, and place the jar on a rotating wheel. The tissue in the jar would only grow into undifferentiated tissue.....meaning no roots, or leaves, just more green tissue. When the "blobs" of tissue got large enough, they would be removed and carefully picked apart, and placed into more jars and returned to the wheel. A few times like this and you would have literally hundreds or thousands of these pieces of tissue.

When we had enough to produce the number of plants we needed/wanted, we would take about 25 pieces and place them in jars with sterile jelled nutrient, seal them and put them on a shelf under lights.

As soon as the plants became stationary, they would recognize up and down, and begin to produce roots that would grow down, and leaves that would grow up.....all these little plants would be exact genetic copies of the parent plant.... Clones.

I would suggest stopping the keiki paste, and let the things on the bloom spikes grow.....When enough of the hormones have worked their way out of the plants system, perhaps these things will decide to either be plants...kiekies, or more bloom spikes.

Its just a suggestion.

As for being impatient.....If you can't get past that, perhaps another kind of plant may be worth considering......Orchids: from pollination to seed harvest = about a year, from seed to bloom = at least 7 years when I was in the business. If you can find a source of Phals. fully grown in 3 inch pots, with good growth you can expect blooms in from 1 to 2 years. They just don't grow fast.

Hope this helps.

Bill

Thanks for the help. Yeah I will probably look for different flowers. Roses are also taking my fancy! I bought these from the store in bloom so I will hang on to them, hope for keikis but probably won't get much more involved than that. 7 years is insane in my time-scale haha.

Do you know what the growth of the one with the green clip is and alternating green with purple edges? The other orchids are pretty random but the orchid with the green clip has 2 growths like that and they look uniform, and didn't grow long like the others did. To me it kinda looks like how the orchid leaves grow, I would guess flower spikes grow longer by this stage as all of the other orchids did. It had a second plant with it at the time growing with it, and was sold as one plant, both were in flower and the other one's flower stem had dried out a week before I got the hormone but this one I caught in time.

The other orchids I think were still slowly growing new flowers before I trimmed their stems but they were very long, they had bloomed a few months before and the flowering had stopped but still grew a bit longer.

It is probably about three years for Phalaenopsis from deflasking the little plants to blooming.

Some types of orchid are very slow. 18 years from deflasking a flask of Dendrobium speciosum var. capricornicum to blooming is a bit long to wait. Similar experience with Dendobium Karloo x speciosum. They were given to my son by a teacher when he left school and my son is now approaching middle age.

Anyway, if you haven't been caught by the orchid bug it doesn't matter all that much and orchid growing can be expensive.

Is the keiki paste you purchased meant for orchids or plants in general?

While you a fiddling about perhaps try some Vandas, they should grow like weeds there.

What are the times like for Vandas? From Seed to flower, and keiki? to flower. I don't mind 6-12 months but longer than that gets a bit tiring. Keiki paste was for orchids especially.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Keiki-Hormone-Paste-Propagating-Orchids-Phalaenopsis-Dendrobium-Epidendrum-/221377639336?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item338b22b3a8 is what I was using.

Vandas are good for your climate, but my understanding with all types of orchids is several years from keiki/new plant to flowering maturity. Some varieties of orchids are almost always in bloom once they get started, but all seem to take a long while to get to blooming size. I wouldn't even consider bothering with seeds as that is a long and involved process.

Again, I'm thinking orchids are not the best match for you if your window is so short. They are SLOW growers. Search around and you will find some folks asking why theirs hasn't bloomed in several years. You either have to get the right orchids for your conditions OR make your conditions right for your orchids to have reliable blooming. Many orchids only bloom once per year, and that bloom time can be for a couple months or a couple weeks.

I think the dream of having orchids as major display items in a garden is just a dream. "Lots of green leaves" is the comment from my better half.

But they add interest to the gardening hobby and in my case I always have something in bloom to take to an orchid society meeting.

I'm guessing that the climate zone up there might be 12 and it is a lot closer to the equator than say Miami.

Here is the wall of my slightly warmed glass-house. It only looks like that for two months of the year, otherwise "lots of green leaves" applies.

Hopefully, tropicbreeznt might read and add to this. re what is easy to grow in Northern Australia.