Repotting beginner encounters boatloads of moss

[JasperBuddy]

Good to know.

If phals love low light then why did mine bloom in a west window and do nothing when it was further away from a south window. I figured it needed more light.🤔 No?

[tmoney]

oh man, you are quickly wading into dangerous territory!!

by this i mean that you need to consider all of the factor affecting a particular plant if you are analyzing blooms. like, perhaps when it was in the west window it was drying faster which it could have liked more so it bloomed. if you moved it, drying rate could have slowed and so the plant is adjusting or doesn't like the longer moist period. what about avg temp differences at the 2 spots, are they significantly different?

not saying this is what happened, only saying that all of these factors affect each other, and when one thing changes the plant may need time to adjust. we are still in this same learning curve and starting to identify factors affecting each plant in each location in our flat.

i would caution you against going down the too much light/not enough rabbit hole and trying to pin flowerring to that single factor alone. note all factors and conditions for each plant for awhile (you often read minimum of a year of observations). using light alone to push flowers will drive you mad, at least this is my humble opinion!!

edit to add a recent experience for an example: we have a dendrobium on the balcony and this spring it grew one bud on one cane. the bud developed nicely for a couple weeks, and one day for some unknown reason i decided to move it less than a foot vertically (its on the floor next to a short bench, so i put it up on the bench). within a couple days it was obvious it didn't like the location as the bud and the whole plant in general started to sulk. so put it back and again a couple days later it was visibly happier again. the only diffence in these 2 spots (literally right next to each other) is the amount of air flow, and i am pretty sure it just didn't like the change to all that "wind".

[estación seca]

They do bloom in higher light. It's just that for most hybrids flower count and size, and inflorescence length, are better at 1,000 foot candles.

[Roberta]

Phals need relatively low light, but they need lots of hours of light. So not a lot of intensity, but the more duration the better. When I was just getting started with orchids, I used my spare bedroom as a "greenhouse'. It got good eastern light for around 4-5 hours a day, then the sun shifted and the light was dim and indirect. My Phals mostly didn't rebloom. Then, I got some super-cheap fluorescent shop lights (this was before LEDs) , put them on a timer 12 hours a day, and bingo... I got about 80% reblooming. They weren't particularly bright, but they extended the "day", and that's what the Phals wanted.