ripening seedpod

[magooba]

After acquiring my first Phaloenopsis at the beginning of Summer, it wasn't long before I'd gotten another ! I crossed the two. One plant, the firsts', flowers seem to have taken but all the flowers dropped and I was left with a spike which I am attempting to convince to grow Keiki's !!. The second, which looks a lot like a "Kaleidoscope" has two seedpods which are develloping nicely ! In the photo it is possible to see that one of these pods is going brown, indicative of ripening. I will watch it closely and when it is 50/75% brown I will harvest it ! This is a very exciting journey for me and I would like to thank all here for being so open and friendly. Oh, I've moved house, and switched to S/h in the meantime, and She's thriving !

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Nice!

Cheers,
BD

[Ron-NY]

nice!! what are you going to do with all the seeds from 2 pods?? Usually a pod ripening starts to turn yellow and not brown. The plant may be aborting it.

[magooba]

Thanks for the info. Here's a pic of it's colour today. Sure hope it's not aborting ! What do you think, should I harvest now? I'm surprised at tha rapidity of its development. I wasn't expecting it until near Christmass !! Thanks for your help, J (Figured two pods was better than one! Just in case lol )

[mohi]

Hi and congrats about the successful cross... I've done some crosses on my phals but unless you are serious, its not worth the energy and stress on the plant... One of my phals has 4 maturing pods... Poor thing... I don't think I see any flowers this year!...
Take you plant under extra care...

[twlarry]

I hope you don't loose you seed pods. I had a keiki on one of mine last year. I had put off repotting it and from what I have read it put out the keiki as a sign of stress. This was after it's second blooming without repotting. When I did repot I found some dead roots but mother and baby are doing fine.
TWLARRY

[Piper]

Google on the gestation of Phal seed pods. That should give you an idea of how many months to wait before harvesting.

Just a caution though. A seedpod puts enormous strain on a plant. Multiple seed pods can kill a plant. It will try and save the seed pods at its own risk. I lost two Catts after I harvested a single pod from each. And a friend lost a prized Lycaste by allowing it to carry two pods.

If you love the plant, I'd remove one pod to be safe. As Ron points out, you'll have a million of seeds from a single pod. What would you do with two million?

McJulie