Long Spikes under lights, what to do?
 

Hey all. I've been growing under lights for the winter, and I guess some of the Oncs like it, as they are starting to spike. 1 of them is particular about having a 3+ foot spike, so I'm wondering what to do with it as it grows. Will the spike "burn" as it gets closer to the T5's? The lamps are onl.y about 1.5 feet from the top of the leaves as is, so I dont want to lose the spike. Just wondering what I should do. Thanks!

Yes, your spike will most likely burn if it gets up into the light. Now that spikes are started, you can probably safely move the plant to someplace farther away from the lights. Not optimal, but better than losing the flowers. You could put the plant in a bright window, perhaps.

It's still quite a bit from blooming, but thanks for the advice. As it grows, I'll just nudge it slowly to the edge of the grow rack. Do you have this "issue" with LEDs frog?

Let us see some pictures when it blooms.

That was one of my reasons for switching to LEDs so I had plenty of headroom to accommodate taller spikes.

Depends on the LEDs. Lower wattage chips don't kick out a lot of heat, and I suppose spikes could touch them without trouble. High watt chips will burn plants (a friend put some nice burn marks on bromeliads with one of my 90 watt units). I'm using several types of LEDs (including some new ones I'll be offering for sale next week). All have advantages and disadvantages. The unit i use the most gives me 24" of clearance above foliage, which is fine for paphs and shorter orchids, which are what predominate in my collection.

I think with any light you need to be able to put the light at a height that gives you room for blooming. Higher power lights of any sort (LEDs or whatever) give you more distance from the plants. If you don't have the height to work with, then it pays to spend some time thinking about what you will do when plants spike up. You may want to invest in one high power, high height unit for finishing flowers. Or perhaps you have enough window space for blooming plants, just not enough for the whole collection. Thinking about that now is better than trying to catch up later. Not that I'm all that good at planning in advance either!

One of the types of LEDs that I am using allows a 30 inch head room over the growing zone, which is high enough for me to deal with standard Phals and Phrags. With tall spiking Phals, I also train them in an arc back over the center of the plant so that the flowers cascade from the top of the arc downwards. You see this presentation a lot at Orchid shows. This obviously takes time and attention, but it give me control of the growing zone and reduces the shading of plants that can occur with chaotic spikes and flowers.

I have a few orchids under LED settup. It does not release heat so the growing spikes do not get burned as they get close to the light. However, I do take the spiking orchids out of the LED set up when the spikes get too tall.