Not sure if i have the right light for my phalaenopsis orchids.
 

Hi, :) I am currently using 2 GE Plant Light Reflector kits 65w sitting about 8 inches from the top of my orchids.
Is this a good grow light for orchids or mostly for other house hold plants? I am also curious as to how far away they should be above the plants.

:bump:

** moved thread to "Growing Under Lights" forum to hopefully get some replies **

Welcome to the forum! I don't know anything about the GE lights but I use an LED long light, that swivels, for the bottom rack for my orchids and it works very well. Do your phals have any tinges on the leaves from light levels. I usually go by if I am getting purple/ pink tinges in the leaves I am doing good!

Hi, Thank you white rabbit for the bump and help getting some answers. LovePhals i'm not sure what "tinges" are my orchids have lots of air roots and ground roots, at least 5-7 leaves per plant. Everything is very green "no purple or pink" but they are slow to grow and are not flowering and i have had them for a year or longer. Thank you for taking time to help, it is very appreciated :)

Not sure if i have the right light for my phalaenopsis orchids.
 

Phalaenopsis are reasonably undemanding when it comes to light. Some of the best flowering phals I've ever seen were in a greenhouse SO covered in algae that you had to wait for your eyes to adjust when coming in from outdoors.

I doubt it's an issue, but if you can point us to your lights online, we may be able to help more.

Orchids tend to be fairly slow growers in the plant world, so a better description of just how slow you perceive it to be will help. We should also remember that their metabolisms can speed up with warmth, so it will depend, to some degree, on the growing temperatures.

As far as flowering, that might be temperature-related, as well. Some species - hence hybrids made with them - require a couple of weeks of a ten-, to fifteen degree drop in average growing temperature in order to initiate flower spikes. If they are grown at a more or less constant temperature all year, they may still do so, but it's less reliable.


Ray Barkalow
firstrays.com

Ok, I can't post a pic or ULR of the lights i use, it won't let me. But if you go to google and search for GE Plant Light Reflector Kit 65 it will bring up the lights. I am curious what you think of them :) thanks

These lights? Amazon.com: GE Lighting 44848 65-Watt Plant Light Reflector Kit with BR30 Light Bulb and Lamp: Home Improvement

Normally you need 5 posts before being able to post links or photos (I think this is an anti spammer measure)

Yes, those are the ones :)

I don't have personal experience with this light, but it is likely to be really inefficient. At least, I don't know any efficient incandescent technology. Nothing is wrong with it; you'll be able to use it for orchids (if you don't mind of wasting a little extra electricity). I'm guessing that 2 of those 8" above the plants is at the high end for Phal hybrid (12-14h/day?). Probably 1 of them is good enough for a single Phal. I'll try to make a measurement of incandescent light when I get home tonight. When the light bulb blows (probably in about 5 months if you are doing 13h/day), you might want to replace it with CFL or LED bulb (e.g. something like this).

I measured 65W incandescent flood light bulbs (I took measurement from 3 bulbs and averaged). Unlike yours, mine is GE 65W Miser Flood, not marketed as "plant" bulb, which I'm not sure if it is a marketing gimmick or if it has a different spectrum. Most incandescent bulbs should have lots of red, which is great for plants. As I speculated earlier, 1x bulb from 8" will be pretty perfect for hybrid Phals (assuming around 13 hours/day).

I include a bit more technical aspects below. Don't read it if you don't care about details (it will probably confuse many people). 8" from 65W incandescent flood light, you get PPFD of 150 micro moles/m^2/s, which is pretty good for artificial light for Phals. You can think PPFD is something similar to foot-candles, but it is more relevant to plants instead of adjusted for human eyes. Full sun is about 2000 micromoles/m^2/s. The bulb consumes 64.5W.

I compared it to CFL flood bulb, and PPFD efficiency isn't much better than incandescent flood, which was a surprise. In other words, you need about 65W of CFL flood to replace 65W of incandescent. Note that I didn't measure the normal spiral kinds of CFL, so this probably won't apply to the normal CFL bulb.

Cree LED is about 4 times more efficient in terms of PPFD than incandescent. I didn't have Cree flood LED, so I used 18W standard A-type bulb with a cheap clip-reflector. This 18W LED gives about 10% more PAR than the 65W incandescent flood bulb. 18W Cree LED is sold as 100W replacement, but they are talking in terms of lumen (green-emphasized measurement). For plant relevant measurement, it replaces 65W incandescent.

Wow, such great information!! Thank you :) I will get the new bulbs "ask for them as a christmas present" ;) I could prob lower the lights closer to the orchids with the bulbs i have now but they do put off heat and i was afraid it would burn them. :/

Sounds good, just a bit of clarification. Most people aren't familiar with PPFD, and it may not be easy to interpret (because most books talk in foot candles, which isn't so useful for artificial lighting). But the punch line is that 8" is probably near perfect for your hybrid Phal, so you don't need to make it closer. You could even give a bit more distance if you can feel the heat at the leaf level.

Details: Phalaenopsis researchers seem to use about 10-20% of sunlight for greenhouse. This corresponds to 200-400 micro moles/m^2/s at the noon time. But unlike natural light, artificial light can give continuous light for the entire day, so you can get the similar cumulative amount of light with 150 micro moles/m^2/s.

Thank you so much for the awsome information, i did go out this evening and bought some new bulbs you suggested for my lamps. Can't wait to put them in tomarrow :) since my old ones get hot when they are on. Feeling excited :) Thanks again!

First Rays also has a nice compact LED bulb that you might want to try. I got one of those and have 4 small oncidiums under it, about 2 or 3 inches above.