| I grow a lot of nobiles and am a distributor of Yamamotos Dendrobiums (the best nobile grower in Hawaii)
My advice is a combination of my experience and suggestions from Koichi at Yamamoto.
Not all nobiles are the same. I have my favorite Den Dream Ace which flowers twice a year never needs to have water or fertilizer reduced. I fertilized one every day last year and fertilized every week and was rewarded with 1000 flower buds.
Yamamoto Dens are more typical in that they bloom once a year setting buds in Sept to Dec for flowering in Dec to April. Reducing fertilizer after August or at latest September is critical. Koichi says this is the main reason from poor results with his orchids. He was not as concerned about the water level although he does reduce it in the fall winter. Nitrogen build up in nobiles prevent flowering so fertilizer should be stopped completely after August.
Also nobiles take very high levels of light. Yamamoto grows his outdoors all the time without any shade. Light level here in Florida are higher than Hawaii so I reduce the light levels in July to September in the afternoons, otherwise I try to give full sun all day.
Nobiles develop flowers on the stems so they should be placed widely apart so that light can reach the bottom of the stem. We commercial growers are always short of space but crowding the plants will produce flowers mostly on the top third of the plant whereas flowers can start as low as the base of the plant. Hobbyist can grow a better looking plant then one purchased commercially so you have a low to look forward to in the years to come.
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jerry  |