noob benchmark help
 

I came across this article while looking for a basic outline for light levels. can those of you who have grown under lights give me your opinion on how accurate this is under your conditions?

Target PPFD for Orchids and Tropical Plants
– High Desert Orchids

I can see this.

The first year, on advice I had read about growing orchids under fluorescent lights, I had the four bulb, four foot lamps too close to my orchids and it was too much for many of my orchids. I now use two single-bulb two foot lamps to light the four foot shelf where I keep most of the orchids and the other lights for the other plants with a few orchids tucked among those plants (the lights are higher).

I'm using LEDs, I can't afford the energy cost of florescents

hi orcish,
I wasn't really too sure what you were trying to find out.

I think it is good to do these experiements, as the poster writes it costs $500 to get the right equipment to even do so.

I am still figuring out what light levels to use. I let the plants grow and use signs they give off to tell me if they want more or less light. It's a bit of trial and error.

I noticed they say for phals they use 70 umol/m2/s

150 umol/m2/s for medium light

300 umol/m2/s for Cattleya

450 umol/m2/s the abosulte max

2,000 umol/m2/s - Full sun

That coud be plasuible. I would estimate in the UK full sun in 1000 umol/m2/s

I've been to Australia, the sun is twice as strong then in the UK.

And even in the UK full sun is too much.

I've heard of people using 70% shade cloth. So 30% of 2000 umol/m2/s (full sun) would be 600 umol/m2/s at its peak or 450 umol/m2/s on average over the whole day.

In the UK we would only need 50% shade cloth max.

The only thing I thought strange is that they reckon phals need 4 times less light than Cattleya's

I basically don't go as accurate as the poster, havng low medium high and extra high light,

I just have high or low light.

my high light is twice as strong as my low light, not 4 times as strong so that's the only thing I thought I do a bit different but I don't know what the ideal level of lights is.

Maybe 4 times less light is accurate, maybe I need to give my Cattleya's more light than I am at the moment.

Could all be, certainly some good info in there to think about.

One thing I have found is that phals much prefer lots of low light, over a little bit of high light so they prefer lots of smaller lights giving off smaller amounts of energy over one strong light lighting up an area whereas Cattleya's like a really strong light source.