Quote:
Originally Posted by nhman
OK. So we are now into May.
I have done the Day to night switch and have kept the temp differential with the Day to night time conditions - hey, we're indoors, we can do virtually anything.
Plants are all doing well with plenty of blooms and sheaths.
In summery, there does NOT appear to be any bad things that have occured with the rather abrupt change over.
All is well in the orchid garden!
Thanks for all of your input and I hope that this supplies a small bit of extra knowledge/experience to some!
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I also switched recently, mostly to give the plants extra heating at night from the lights, when it can get cold here in winter. Now i don't need to heat at all during winter.
So far the plants have not shown any obvious problems (they were switched gradually, 3 times, 4 hours at a time over about 2 weeks).
The only caveat i would include with the theory is that most orchids (the CAM types like Phalaenopsis and Cattleya) use the light/dark cycle to stimulate their respiration cycle, and do completely different processes during the day and at night.
And studies have shown that in the
complete absence of light, orchids continue to cycle in a subdued kind of way.
Biologists liken the effect to Circadian rhythyms.
So if you suddenly swap the light/dark cycle, then the plant will be getting mixed messages for a while until it adapts. It will want to respire during the day and photosynthesis at night - obviously a problem because there's no light at night.
But if this is a problem, it's obviously not a major one, as nhman shows. Humans get jet-lag too, and we feel pretty bad for a few days, but we get over it.