Photoperiod

[Paul Mc]

I'm in the Midwest, St. Louis, MO. I have almost all of my orchids in windowsills so they are getting the natural light cycle as we progress. That being said, I do have a few in my basement along with my BIG tropical plant collection. The lights down there have been giving artificial daylight longer than the daylight outside throughout most of the winter. However, now the lights coming on/off are getting much closer to the natural light pattern outside. I personally do this because all of my tropicals are from places where the day is a bit longer during the winter than ours is. Plus, I have noticed that the plants seem to do a bit better (and this year they all survived) with a longer light pattern.