I have had keiki's grow of their own accord on a flower stem, and also have 'stimulated' them to grow on flower stems after the flowers are finished, which is kind of what Heath is attempting to do. But I don't think you can 'air layer' an orchid the same way you would a terrestrial plant because orchids form the leaves first, so you need to leave the stem out in the air, and just keep the humidity up around it.
To stimulate keikis to form, I just dabbed the node with the keiki paste, misted the plants daily, and the keikis formed nicely. If the weather hadn't been so hot right after they formed, I'm sure more of them would have survived.
When I said at the beginning that you could 'air layer' an orchid, I thought Heath meant he already had a keiki forming on the stem and just wanted to pin it down into another pot. I'm sure that's what phals do in the wild, to self-propagate. I'd still call that air layering, wouldn't you?
I'd never have the patience to grow a Phal - or any orchid - from a seedling, Ken. Doesn't it take 2 or 3 years to get to a blooming size plant? But since you are growing to sell and have nice greenhouses for controlling your conditions, I can see how you'd want to do that. I'm growing orchids outdoors, for the flowers, and to eventually have some nice big specimen plants to show off.
