I did wait until the blooms finished, Ken. Then just pulled back the little triangular calyx that's on the node, and dabbed a tiny amount of the paste on the node with a Q-tip. Then I stuck the little piece of calyx back over the paste. (they usually break off when you bend them back) I think I did re-apply the paste once about 2 weeks after the first application.

I only treated the two nodes closest to the plant on the stem, as that's what the instructions said.

On my Phaius, I treated at least 3 nodes on each stem, because the stems were 3ft. long and had a lot of nodes. They all made keikis, I was amazed!

Ok, a bunch of mine are just now growing those stems/buds, so it will be summer before I can even try this, Elaine. Thanks.

I want to try this because I have had several Phals and have never had a keiki. They always bloom sometimes twice on the same stem. But the question is if it grows a keiki. Will it be because of me or just the natural order. Either way I will keep everyone posted. This has been a great learning experience Thanks for all the good advice

I am here a little late. Change Subject to Phal Keikis - was Air Layering. :-)

I regularly use keiki paste on some plants after my Phals are done blooming. If the plant appears tired or stressed or not 100 % up to snuff, I do not apply keiki paste. The paste is applied at the nodes on the stem(s). To facilitate, I cut the sheath covering the nodes gently with a scalpel and use tweezers to remove it - the sheath. I have seen Youtube videos of this lady ripping them off with her finger nails. Dont do that unless you want to trash the growth point bud. After you have done it a few times, you can look at the bud and have a feel for whether it will do something or not. Before hand, you can not determine if it will throw more blooms or make a keiki.

I have 12 phals. Of these, I applied keiki paste to about 1/2 over the past year. Of the 6, 3 threw out new blooms, two threw new blooms and a keiki and the others made only keikis. I also had one that threw a terminal bloom. That one on its own with no paste made 2 keikis - one on the stem and one basal. Likely the plant knew it was a goner and was trying to "survive".

You should not apply keiki paste until the plant has completely finished blooming! Also - you can only do so on stems that are green and healthy. If they are turning brown or otherwise do not look healthy, don't waste your time.

Right now I have 7 keikis - the oldest is nearly a year old and is big enough to remove from Mom. On one plant I have 3 keikis - one basal and one each on former flowering stems.

All of the plants that have keikis are some of my best looking and healthiest plants.

FWIW, I have never heard of air layering an orchid.

Keiki paste ranges in price from $7 to over $30. I have experience only using the product named Keiki Power Pro.

Once a Keiki has formed, I treat its base with Root Tech cloning gel (a common rooting hormone used for taking cuttings) which helps to create roots. It seems to help and my tests show that it seems to help about 50 % of the time. E.G. two keikis forming at the same time on one plant, one treated and one not. The one treated grew roots sooner and faster and the roots were larger.

As noted above, Phals can make a keiki with no human intervention. It apparently happens quite often after a Phal has made a "Terminal" bloom.

I have been playing around with keikis for over 2 years and have been growing Phals for 4 years. I also have one Cattalaya. This is all I have as my wife refuses to allow me to buy any more.

I think some of you folks failed cause you had the Phals outside. I grow mine year round in the kitchen. So their environment is basically almost the same year round except for light. They are exposed to some light from South window, mostly from West windows.

I have done a lot of air and ground layering and would not describe this as air layering. If a keiki does form, it makes leaves first. The leaves may be around and grow for several months (as much as 6 in some of my cases) before you see a root. I have one keiki that has 4 leaves, the largest nearly 5 inches. It has 4 roots, the longest being about 2 inches.

People who know a lot more about this than me suggest that you do not remove a keiki unless it has at least 3 roots at least 1 1/2 inches minimum. This is for stem based keikis. Basal keikis can be so intertwined and attached so close to Mom, that I simply do not attempt to remove them for fear of killing either or both Mom and the youngster.

In nature, it is my understanding that when the time is right, a stem based keiki simply falls from Mom as the stem dies back and it attaches itself to whatever Mom is attached to.

I too have never heard of air-layering an orchid. I air-layer my ficus varieties and in my experience, it is more successful than trying to root cuttings.

Nice write-up, David!

Where do you buy your Keiki paste?

Very good write up, David. I have some Keiki paste too, and used it on both my Phals and my Phaius (which also throw keikis from the flower stem after blooming) a couple of years ago. It was amazingly effective. Everywhere I put it, a keiki formed, and a few of them survived too. I have had a couple of my Phals make keikis without any help, and I did have one that dropped to the ground after the stem dried up, so I rescued it and put it in the basket with its mama.

The Phaius babies are still not up to blooming size, but a couple of the Phal keikis are getting pretty big now. I just gave them a hunk of cork bark to attach roots to, and once they attached, I cut the stem if it was brown, and detached a new plant, or put it in the basket with the mother.

All my orchids are growing outdoors, but I do bring them in or cover them if the temperatures are going to dip into the 40's. Don't know about where you are, but summer doesn't seem to want to leave us down here. High is supposed to hit 88 today. Low temp the night before last was 75. I'm ready for some coolth.

I don't grow many Phal., but have a question for those who know these plants well. When a stem remains viable, as often as not it will re-bloom. If a stem forms a keiki, will that stem also bloom? Or has that stem now transferred its "energy" into keiki formation rather than flowers, for evermore?

Keep in mind that mine are always grown inside other than when I have given them late fall shock treatment.

@Ursula - I don't recall - I can tell you where I bought my Commiphora neglecta seed, but not the paste. It is Keiki Power Pro and I bought it on the internet. I think it was here:

http://www.keikipowerpro.com/o...

While I recall that it was around 12 $, a container lasts a long time for a hobbyist.

@dyzzypyxxy - I live in St. Joseph Missouri Zone 5B/6. My orchids are always inside in the summer. On a couple of occasions, I took them out to a screen porch in late fall to expose them to very cool weather - late fall shock treatment. This can help induce blooming.

@drdawg says:

"When a stem remains viable, as often as not it will re-bloom. If a stem forms a keiki, will that stem also bloom? Or has that stem now transferred its "energy" into keiki formation rather than flowers, for evermore?"

In my experience over several years, if keiki paste is not used, a viable stem (i.e. healthy and fully green) might rebloom maybe 25 % of the time. That was my experience before using the paste over ~ 2 years. Until I started using the paste, I did not have any Phals make a keiki.

Using paste, less than 10 % or so made an added bloom and keiki on the same stem.

By a factor of maybe 2 to 1, using the paste causes bloom rather than keikis.

I now have 3 basal keikis. I did not put any paste there cause they are not located where a bloom stem was.

The last part of your question, I don't know. Getting too deep into the genetics. But I do have a hunch - see below.

One thing I do know is that if a Phal does a terminal bloom, it nearly always makes a basal keiki on its own.

Hunch. My hunch is that keikis are a survivor mechanism as the keiki is a 100 % clone of Mama. Seeds OTOH are reproduction mechanisms.

One other note - I have never had a keiki fall off and perish. But I did have what is essentially the same thing. Stem turned brown below the keiki and I cut it off and potted it. Its roots were not developed well enough and it perished.

Almost all of my Phals bloom around the same time - Feb or so start. They then bloom for 3 - 6 months.

One more cautionary note. Do not apply keiki paste to a reblooming stem. Give the plant a rest!

Hope this info is helpful.

Well.... my experiment was a failure my orchid stem did not root. I just took the moss off of the stem last week and it looks exactly the same as it did almost a year ago it is still green and alive so it might bloom for me again.. Part of it could be my fault I couldn't keep it moist enough it would dry out every day and i had to spray it every evening to rewet it. Sometimes I would forget about it and it would go a couple of days with out being wet. Maybe next time I will try the keiki paste

That's a good idea, Heath. Phal orchids are not terrestrial plants, they are epiphytes that gather most of their nutrients from the air and rain. So (unlike terrestrials) they don't put out roots until the baby plants are getting ready to try attaching to a friendly spot.

The roots mainly anchor the plant to its chosen spot.