Care of indoor, lower light Phalaenopsis

[MateoinLosAngeles]

Originally Posted by HiOrcDen

Oh, btw... would it be at all a good idea to use a West facing window, in addition to lights? How would this compare to just using led lights, or just the west window? And if this might be an advisable combination, would I aim for the same levels from the led's?

again guys!

A photon is a photon regardless of whether it comes from a west facing window or an LED light. The issue is the extreme heat that some afternoon light (which comes from the west) can produce. But the recommended light levels don’t change with the light source. You can also fix the heat issue with a sheer curtain.

To measure light I use the app “Photone” for iPhone. It works well but has been reported that it usually overshoots by 20% so what I do is aim for the upper tolerable range (say 80 umol/m2/s for a Phalaenopsis) assuming that it is actually getting about 20% lower.

Phalaenopsis are low light plants, it’s highly unlikely you would need any light supplementation and they might even do well on the East window even with the ficus blocking light (isn’t this how they live in nature anyway? With light blocked by trees).

Read these:
Supplemental Light
https://herebutnot.com/light-recomme...d-houseplants/

[Roberta]

What the LED lights can gain for you is light duration especially in the winter, but any time if there is shading during parts of the day. I found that 12 hours a day of supplemental light was helpful, in addition to light coming in a window, because the light was very indirect during much of the day. (At the time that I did this, I had 4-5 hours of good morning light, then the sun shifted and what I was getting was insufficient)

[HiOrcDen]

Originally Posted by Roberta

What the LED lights can gain for you is light duration especially in the winter, but any time if there is shading during parts of the day. I found that 12 hours a day of supplemental light was helpful, in addition to light coming in a window, because the light was very indirect during much of the day. (At the time that I did this, I had 4-5 hours of good morning light, then the sun shifted and what I was getting was insufficient)

Cool, Thank you all again! @Roberta ...I have got a question for you on a different subject. You have told me that in our climate, humidity will not be much of an issue. However, I did look at your website, and you seem to have a pretty vast collection housing! I just have 2 5x5' structures.

So my question is, is it possible that you have no issues with humidity, because your collection area is so large, so might somehow create a large zone of higher humidity, than 2 little structures like min? lol

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by HiOrcDen

Cool, Thank you all again! @Roberta ...I have got a question for you on a different subject. You have told me that in our climate, humidity will not be much of an issue. However, I did look at your website, and you seem to have a pretty vast collection housing! I just have 2 5x5' structures.

So my question is, is it possible that you have no issues with humidity, because your collection area is so large, so might somehow create a large zone of higher humidity, than 2 little structures like min? lol

My collection is spread out over my whole yard - I have shade cloth over my growing areas but otherwise the plants get whatever Mother Nature gives. It is completely open. The structures that I have are just to hold up the shade cloth and provide place to hang plants. My patio is pretty crowded, but still gets all of the breeze and air movement. Humidity is whatever it is. Warm-growers like Phals get the very small greenhouse which is quite stuffed, that is quite humid. But for the outdoor plants (about 90% of my collection), air movement is plentiful. Including Santa Ana winds that can lower the humidity to single digits (fortunately not for too many days, most of the time average daytime humidity is usually not much lower than 40%, night humidity 65-85%) I do know at any time what the humidity is, I have a thermometer/hygrometer outside on the patio with the readout inside where I can see it. So no mystery...