| Can you update your location - it helps to know what your environment is like to others who may have advice.
Sometimes after bloom the primary spike will continue to grow and produce a few flowers on the tip instead of growing a new subspike on the side of the spike. Some varieties of phals continue to grow the tip out a few flowers at a time over a period of months and months. I have a phal that does this. Most of my hybrid phals that have but a few flowers still hanging on this time of year - I remove the entire spike down to the base - so that the plant will concentrate its energy in building up the strength of the plant for the next spike coming this winter.
The normal growth cycle of most phals is to loose a bottom leaf or two and then to grow replacements and maybe an additional during the growing season. So, it sounds like yours is doing what it should be doing.
Watering weakly weekly with fertilizer is a routine that any on the forum use. Especially during the growing season it is important to give you phals plenty of food - it can dramatically affect the size of the new leaves. I like to run plenty of water through my plants every few weeks too - to make certain that I'm not getting any buildup of unwanted minerals or salts in the media that could be injurious to the plants.
Hard (at least for me) to say anything about the "speckle" stem without seeing it.
In general, from what you have said, it sounds like your plant is progressing normally.
mike  |