Quote Originally Posted by tucker85 View Post
For what it's worth, I was just reading an article in the journal of the International Phalaenopsis Alliance. It said that commercial growers that give more light (they didn't say how much) and lower daytime temperatures (they didn't say how low) get more flowers and multiple spikes. They also said that higher daytime temperatures produce longer spikes but fewer flowers. Of course commercial growers also know exactly how much water and fertilizer to give.
Great information, Jeff, and I think it can be generalized to a lot of other orchid genera raised in commercial greenhouses, in the sense that they know and give the optimum conditions for each kind to flower the most possible.

One thing I have heard/read is that phals, commercially-grown phals especially, are kind of "programmed" to bloom themselves to death. In other words, they put all their plant resources into those initial blooms you see, and then have none left to go on through another cycle.

Just another piece of orchid trivia...