Yeah, currently my begonias and the ivy are on top of the bakers rack, then the African violets, and the Phals are on the bottom. I'd probably keep the same arrangement as best I could when we moved, only I'd have to get the begonia its own light. That thing is more than a foot tall, it went crazy this past year growing. So anything above it would have to be separate bc I think it would end up being too far away from the others. I might just stick it in another room with its own light.

You can also "stagger" lights for different growing heights, although aesthetically, it can look a little Odd. (i.e. you can have a "tall" plant side and a "short" plant side to your rack with the lights mounted higher and lower, as needed).

I tend to err on the side of function over form, my wife, not so much. :D

I'm pretty sure that's a male/female thing. I like function, but only if it's pretty AND functional. My fiance, he doesn't give two flying figs how it looks as long as it works. Lol! It would probably liven our place up to have different plants in different rooms, anyway. We're upgrading to a larger place and though the windows are a crappy orientation, we're getting more of them and a couple extra rooms, so. I actually have space to spread them out now :O I guess that means I have space to buy more plants to fill that space, right??

Exactly. And when the space runs out, you get creative and find more shelves and lights if necessary ;)

But yes, more plants in more rooms is always good. :D

You can also supplement the window lighting by putting bulbs at the top of the window, but sometimes too many lights makes people think you're growing pot in your apartment... Even pretty low light windows will often support phals and many paphs.

My fiance has been looking into hydroponics/aeroponics since we won't have any balcony space, and apparently the Pot growers are leading the way with that, haha! No, I would make sure I didn't have too many.

I had originally thought about putting the plants on a shelf near the window and running track lighting with directed CFLs (before I saw the LED thing), but they would probably be too far away. I will work out the logistics (and if I don't, the engineer sure will) once we get in and see. It's nice to have the options, though. :D

Also I suppose I should clarify that he's not looking into it for pot, he's looking into it for herbs and a few small veggie plants since I normally grow things on our patio and can't this year* Lol.

I've often wondered how some of the more moisture loving orchids would take to aeroponics.
Most things you'd grow on a balcony (herbs & vegetables) need really high light, way more than most orchids.
Of course, you have one big choice - either tailor your orchid collection to your growing space(s) or tailor your growing space(s) to your orchid collection! Having more than one growing area isn't a bad thing, as you can then have microclimates/grow different climate orchids (cool/intermediate/warm). If you can persuade veg and herbs to grow, you've probably got enough light for high light orchids like vandas.

I'm still brand new to orchids, so I'm cool with my phals for now, and I was thinking of maybe looking to some Cattleyas if I can successfully spike and grow my phals. Most of the ones I have are mystery plants that were on clearance or that I inherited AFTER they had bloomed so I have no idea what they look like. That said, I think Cattleyas are awesome, they look like daffodils, which are a favorite and I think they'd be a fun next step.

Our place is going to be big enough to have a couple separate micro-growing areas (my plants in the main area, the growing area in the spare bedroom, etc). He said in his research that orchids are apparently able to grow via aeroponics quite successfully because it doesn't rot the roots by being too wet. He wants to take one of my phals to experiment with it but I said no. I'll take him to a big box store and let him pick out some clearance ones for himself. That way if they die it's not any of my plants, haha. If I kill any, I want to be responsible for killing them. *pout*

Heh :) Cattleyas like a *lot* more light that phals. If you'd like a rough idea of what wants how much light, have a look at the brief overview I compiled for myself a while back : Orchids on a Balcony: New Gadget: Light Meter

That's actually one of the reasons I haven't ventured into them yet. If we were staying where we are or had successfully gotten a place where we were still oriented south, I would probably have tried it within the next year or so.

The biggest problem I'm having with the footcandle thing is that I don't know how it transfers over into watts. I tried to convert it via a few websites but every answer came out different which freaked me out.

Some of the Dendrobiums also, I guess, look a bit "daffodil-y". https://www.google.co.za/search?q=de...w=1280&bih=826

---------- Post added at 04:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:54 PM ----------

The problem (and one reason the numbers vary so much) is that Watts doesn't actually tell you that much about how much light it's putting out, it tells you how much power it's chomping.
Different kinds of light are more or less efficient too (so incandescent doesn't give you much light per watt, whereas LED does, with fluorescent somewhere in between).

The other problem is that the light intensity differs depending on how far away you are (inverse square law and all that). Think of a camera flash. Blinding when your friend kindly points a camera at your face from a foot away, but does nothing in a stadium at night beyond a few feet.

The only way to exactly know how a given lamp will perform is to measure it in situ, as even things like the bulb fixture and surrounding walls etc. make a difference, as well as how far away the light meter sits from the source.