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adamg12_gw

Need Advice - Growing Phals/Oncidiums under lights

adamg12
9 years ago

Hey everyone!

So I recently moved to a town up North (56 degrees N), and I had to bring my orchids with me. Because of the lack of sun I had to buy some grow lights to supplement the natural light.

I put my orchids (1 oncidium, 7 phals) near a window, so they get about 8 hours of slightly dim natural light. I installed two reflective clamp lights with one warm and one cool - both 100w bulbs (1600 lumens).

My oncidium is placed in the middle so it receives more light because it's taller, and i propped up my mini orchids high to receive more light. Couple pictures below of the whole set-up. The lights are on for 13 hours.

Is 2 bulbs and some natural light enough to provide enough light for the orchids for normal growth and flowering? Any advice on this matter would be very helpful! Thanks

Comments (2)

  • Jetson15
    9 years ago

    Should work fine. I grow all my orchids indoors and they seem to do fine. A couple of things you might want to consider.

    Humidity first. Your heating/Ac system will probably kep your humidity down below 40% which is a little low for your plants. I would find something you could use as a shallow dish (needs to be a couple of inches deep) large enough for all your plants to sit in. Go to lowes or home depot and get some plastic lighting egg crate and cut it to fit inside your pan. I use little pieces of PVC (3/4") to set the egg crate on. Fill the pan with water and put the plants on top of the egg crate. Should keep the humidity around 55-60%.

    Second, on your lighting, remember plants want natural sunlight. That's what they would have if they were outside. I would get 2 100 watt CFI Daylight bulbs. They are fluorescent so very low heat and are rated at 6000Kelvin which is very close to natural sunlight. Grow lights are okay, but I think full spectrum daylight bulbs are the way to go. The kelvin rating on the bulbs you mentioned may not be high enough to satisfy the plants needs. Caution when you switch to the daylight bulbs. At first they may be a little bright for your plants, so don't put them to close or they may burn until they get acclimated to the light. Watch the leaf color. If it slowly turns yellow green, your okay. If its fast, move the lights back a bit.

    Alan

  • scorpio_bafh
    9 years ago

    Hi Allen and O.P.
    Some remarks about natural and artificial light
    Sunlight is great but only because of the enormous amount 500->1000Watt a square meter (summer midday 5000/10,000 candela or 50,000 to 100,000 Lux) but the chlorophyll of the plant uses only a small part of that namely the blue band 430->450nm and the red band 650->670nm and that is the strong side of led grow lights it generates only those bands and therefore more than 90% of the light output can be used. Other light sources are around 20% effective.
    That is the reason that more and more commercial nurseries here are moving to led light. The story goes that the investment will pay itself back in 2-> 5 years because of the lower electricity bill and bigger crops.
    So my personal conclusion is, imitating natural light is not the way to go, but led grow light is,
    Alfred.
    P.S. The "bulbs" you are using are 100w/1600 lumen
    I build an array of star grow leds 3w/200 lumen each
    1600/200= 8 -> 8*(3 watt leds)=24 watt instead of 100Watt

    This post was edited by scorpio_bafh on Thu, Nov 13, 14 at 17:33

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