Orchid Dormancy
25K views
Jul 9, 2021
How do I know if my orchid is dead? Do all the leaves drop during dormancy? Why is it important to repot during dormancy? Is crown rot normal during dormancy? How long do orchids live? How do I care for orchids during dormancy? How do I induce a dormancy period?
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Once an orchid blossoms and it comes out with these beautiful flowers, it's going to go into a period of dormancy
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Now, not all orchids have a period of dormancy. So in this video, I'm going to go over the top eight questions that people have about dead or dormant orchids
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Because sadly, some of these orchids do end up in the trash can after this period of dormancy because you think, what are they doing
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Hi, I'm Amanda Matthews and thank you for watching this video at Orchidaria
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where I share my tips of how to grow orchids indoors since my outside conditions are not that great
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See, some orchids go through this period of dormancy where they're not in active growth
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They are absorbing water and nutrients, but hardly any. Some can look like this where all the leaves almost fall off
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This is a dendrobium orchid and it is starting to come out of dormancy with new
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little, new little canes growing around here. This is another dendrobrium orchid. But if you get this orchid
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and you don't look at this part, that's pretty dead. So dormancy can look very different. And the
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probably the worst orchid for looking dead is a catacetum orchid. Now, these do look horrible because
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in dormancy, they're not going to have this part. They're just going to have this bent suit
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Dormancy will differ in the way the orchid looks by how long this orchid has a dormancy cycle
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So if the dormancy cycle is extremely tiny, the effects will hardly be any at all
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If the dormancy like a catacetum can go up to months, then yes, it's going to look pretty bad
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The first thing you want to know is if your orchid is actually alive or dead during this dormancy period, because the orchid is going to look pretty bad
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orchids can die at any time. And you might be, you know, waiting for this dead orchid to
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come back to life and it's not. So one thing you need to do is research. Not all orchids have
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a dormancy period. A phalanopsis, for example, doesn't. So your phalanopsis will not go into
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dormancy. It will drop off all the leaves and then it will start a new cycle, but that cycle does not
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include dormancy. It just goes right back in to producing new roots, new leaves, and a new flower
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spike. If your orchid does have a dormancy, the second thing you're going to want to look at
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the first is if it is, if it does have dormancy, the second is how long is this dormant period
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So if your orchid has a teeny tiny dormant period and all of a sudden your orchid is
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dropping all the leaves or all the roots are dying off, and you have severe crowned discolmated
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which is the center of the orchid, those three signs you're going to probably signify
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yeah, your orchid needs a trash can. Of course, if your orchid has a longer period of dormancy, these are going to be normal and expected
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For example, this one was beautiful. It still will be. Signs of dormancy, they do not move, they do not react. Yeah
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Second question. question do all dormant orchids drop their leaves No they don The most famous orchids for dropping leaves are catacetum orchids are dendrobiums and lycustes but not all will
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So if you have an orchid that is not these three and it's dropping every single leaf, like a catelia orchid
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if this starts dropping its leaves, there's something severely wrong with it
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Or if it's a Brasavola orchid, also there's, you need to really really
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look into that and see what is happening. The third question is why is it important to repot during
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dormancy? Now orchids love stability. They love to be in one place for life. They love to not be touched
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not be messed with, you know, take off the shelf, put it back on the shelf, turn it around, repop
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get a bigger pot, put it by the window seal, take it off the window seal. They hate that. I mean
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If you can leave your orchid alone and just put it for one place and leave it there and
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preferably set up a system where you can water and put it back in the same place that it was
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even in the same direction, your orchid will grow a lot better, a lot faster, and a lot
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livelier than if you're always moving it. So in this cycle of repotting, why are we going
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to repot while it's in dormancy? Because it's not going to repot
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feel it that much. Most of these orchids you're going to repot will lose all their roots anyway and they're
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going to grow new ones. For example, the catacetum orchid. You can already tell that it's growing new
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roots on the side. The fourth question is, is it common to have crown rot during dormancy
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Now, crown rot occurs because of overwatering or misting and it does, and you're in a place where
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there's not moving air circulation, so that water is going to sit on the leaf
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long time before it evaporate. Orchids aren't made to be submerged in water. They compare it like this
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They don't like to have wet socks on all day long. I mean, it's fun to go out, play in a river
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playing a pond, in a lake, in the ocean. But then you get out, you dry off, and you don't stay
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completely soggy and wet the whole time. Well, an orchid's the same way. They love water
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but they love to dry out too. So if your room does not have
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air circulation if you're you placed it in the window still but close the window and there's no wind
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coming in or if you don't have an overhead fan i know you can't see it in the video but there's an
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overhead fan in here because this is my home office this is where i work so you have to keep that
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air running now the most common problem with crown rot during dormancy is that you're watering
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you should not be watering at least not as much as you would or could that is
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in full bloom. Keep it watered but extremely, extremely small doses because if not you are going to cause
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crown rot. All those nutrients and all that hydration in there, it's just going to rot out the roots
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And if you get water on the crown and the stem in the center of the orchid, that is going to cause
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crown rot. Before I go on to the next question, if you are liking this video, please give it a
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like or comment down below. So I know what videos to do more of. Give me some kind of feedback
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It really helps me In the long run it helps you because you get better videos from this The fifth question is do all orchids respond to dormancy in a different way Yes they do Each orchid will have a higher or a low or you know
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different things that goes through during dormancy. Some dormancy periods are so tiny, tiny, tiny. It's
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almost considered as if they don't have a dormancy period. And this is where a lot of people will disagree
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about the phalanopsis orchid. I've seen both sides. I've seen people who say they do, but it's so tiny
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you can't even see it. I've seen other people say, no, that's ridiculous. They don't. The sixth question
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about dormancy. How long does an orchid live anyway? I mean, what if I'm actually, what if I have a
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dead orchid? It just came to the natural death of its life cycle, and I'm just sitting here waiting for it to bloom
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and it's not going to do anything. How long do orchid's, live in nature. Oh, this is such an unfair answer. In nature, orchids will live up to a hundred
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years or 150 years. Indoors, that's going to be extremely different because, I mean, I can
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I can fertilize them as much as I want. I can water them right. I can provide the bright
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light for them. I can do everything right, but it's still not home
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In general, most of these orchids will live up to 20 to 30 years
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I have seen homegrown orchids live up to 50, but they have a huge misting system and it's almost professional
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Like, the seventh question about orchids is how do you care for an orchid that is dormant
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Now, first, verify that your orchid is dormant. If all your suitables, or in this case, canes are shrinking
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then yes, your orchid is going into dormant. to see if it's just one and all the others are nice and plump and full of juice, then you might have
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some kind of pest or insect that is eating on your orchid. So check into that. Check into it might be a
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fungus that is just sucking out all the nutrients from this orchid. So make sure that your orchid is a
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suitable shrinking, a leaf dropping, a root decaying little plant. And now you are certain that
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it's in dormancy. How to care for this? Well, first you're going to halt the watering and it's not
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going to use the water. It doesn't have the roots for that. You're going to stop or halt the fertilizing
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completely. You do not need to add fertilizer to a dormant orchid. It's not going to use it. It's not
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absorbing anything. Also, drop the temperatures because usually, this is not for all cases. Usually
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your orchid that goes into dormancy comes from a place where the temperatures are going to drop during
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this time. And you're going to drop the light requirement. So don't keep your orchid like a dendrobrium
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Really loves light. Usually I keep my dendrograms on the top shelf a little bit behind the
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Cattlias. But during dormancy, I'll move them from here to this shelf. Now this is weird
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them from the top shelf to the second shelf where they get less light along with all
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the other phalanopsis orchids so when your orchid does go into dormancy you keep it away from the light See when you see it starting to come out of dormancy start increasing your water start
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increasing your light. The orchid comes out of dormancy because it senses this shift in the environment
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So it senses how many hours of light it gets a day. It also senses the brightness of this light
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It senses how strong this light is. It senses the humidity in the air
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It senses how much water it's getting through its roots. So all those signal to the orchid, hey, it's time to put out new roots
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Hey, it's time to put out a new leaf. Hey, it's time to grow a new pseudobob
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Hey, it's time to get back into the swing of things. So all these things are going to influence
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So if you can do those and mimic those inside your environment, you will induce that orchid
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to come out of dormant. One important note, if you water during dormancy and keep your main water schedule
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like if I water all of these the same way, dormant orchid is going to get root rot
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because the water is not going to be absorbed inside that pot. It's just going to sit there
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The roots aren't actually doing anything with this water and the water's not going to drain that fast
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So you will get root rot if you keep watering during dormancy
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Question number eight, can you induce your orchids to go dormant? Yes, you can't. Remember, there are
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mainly three things that will induce this and that is a drop in temperature, shorter days
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and less rain. So all these are going to induce that orchid to go into dormancy. So let's put that
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into practical terms. Let's say you want to induce dormancy to then induce a later to induce a flower
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spike. So the first thing you're going to do, less light. So if you keep your artificial lights on
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from 14 to 16 hours a day, you need to really drop that to about 10 to 12 hours a day. You're going to
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instead of water, you will need to mist or keep your humidifier on. Just because your orchid is not
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absorbing water doesn't mean that it moved from a very humid place to a desert. And turn your
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thermostat down a few degrees, especially at night. You can really, drop that. So during the day
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you're going to drop it about 10 degrees at night. You'll want to drop it about 15 degrees. And I do want to
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say one thing about my new book that is almost coming out. I mean, it's like a few days away
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from coming out. Oh, bye, cat. So in my book, I do have an entire chapter about the blooming cycle
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and I talk about if it's dead or if it's dormant. And I've included pages in here so you can keep notes of up to 30 orchids of when it
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bloomed, when it came out of bloom, when the new roots grew. So in the first year, you'll have all this
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And then in the second year, you'll have parameters to keep that orchid alive, to keep it
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blooming, to keep it alive and well. So stay on the lookout for orchid journey
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If you haven't, you can look at this link down here, which is. Orcadaria.com slash orchid journey
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And there's a dash in there between. In all, thank you so much for watching this video
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And I wish you the best in your orchid care. Happy cultivating
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