Back in December I bought two orchids from a wholefoods market, a big beautiful Cattleya overflowing with soft pink and white flowers and a Phalaenopsis with hot pink flowers. Lets just say that as of right now, 8 months after I brought them home, they aren’t doing so well…
As a side note here is a little background story on the first few months of their lives with me. I still live at home with my parents and thus have no say in matters of house keeping, such as use of the thermostat. Well back in the winter months my frugal mother (lets just say it, cheep!) refused to heat the house any higher than 65 degrees. Really the temp. in the house was usually somewhere in between 60-63 degrees. If I felt like I was cold I know these tropical plants must have been freezing! Within just a week or so all of the flowers on both plants started to fall off. I don’t know anything about orchid care really but I think that this really must have shocked these plants so bad that they have yet to recover.
Within a few more weeks of the flowers falling off the Phalaenopsis started to lose its leaves one by one. Each leaf would start to turn yellow at the base and within a few days the entire leaf would be brown/yellow and with a slight tug would easily off. Soon all I had was a spike in some potting mix. Needless to say, I figured it was completely dead, tossed it, and went out and got another to try again. The new one I have has done very well all summer and has just started to lose its flowers which I know is fine. What has me worried is that the same thing is starting to happen to the leaves!!! So far it has only lost one but I fear it will lose more. What should I do? Also, one of the spikes is turning brown one the top two inches. Should I cut the whole spike off or just the brown part.
As for the Cattleya, it has not die on me…yet. Not for lack of abuse; I am now aware I have unknowingly have cause it severe trauma. Not only did the poor thing suffer a winter long freeze, I also cut both the spikes away as soon as the flowers dropped and repotted it when spring came. Ever since the warm summer weather hit it has seemed to be doing fine though. But it too has started to lose its leaves. So far two, and counting. About two months ago it lost two leaves over the course of a week and then it stopped. What prompted me to finally find help was I noticed yesterday another leaf had a hint of yellow tint to it. Today I can see that this leaf too, is doomed. Oh, and one other thing. The Cattleya is plagued by teeny, tiny little flies that seem to call it home. They aren’t common fruit flies, they are much smaller. They don’t seem to be causing it any harm, there are no holes in the leaves or anything like that; they just gross me out. And they are a new problem. They have only been around for a few weeks; the plant started losing its leaves long before they showed up. One last thing, the Phalaenopsis is only about a foot away from the Cattleya and yet the flies never go over to that one. Why?? I haven’t done anything different. I water them both about once a week. They both get a lot of indirect sunlight. What am I doing wrong??? What can I do to make them both healthy again and flower one day?
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