"Flashing" your lights to force blooms??
 

Hey all!

So, I was just reading in one of my favorite blogs, "Krulwich Wonders," and saw this article:
How To Produce A Billion Flowers On The Very Same Day : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR
It's basically about how commercial florists force blooms by manipulating lighting, sometimes by simply flashing on the lights for just a few minutes to interrupt the length of straight darkness at night.
I feel vaguely like I've heard some sort of mention of something like this before at an orchid meeting... but I'm not sure.
Would this method potentially work with some of my orchids? I grow my catts and phals under lights, so I could totally manipulate things to interrupt their nights...
Does anyone have any idea? Has anyone tried it?

The flowering of some cattleyas is daylength sensitive and require short days (actually, long nights) to flower. So you can inhibit flowering by preventing long nights. A method for doing this is to turn on some lights for a short while in the middle of the night to interrupt the night.

Phil's Orchid World - FLOWER BUD INITIAITON

If you're growing under lights, why not just adjust your timer to change your photoperiod.

Do all your orchid flower regularly one a year? If not, try to find the right condition to make them flower.

ALL tricks commersial grower use to make orchid flower is always done on orchids that is mature and prepared to flower! They just adopt their conditions so mature plants does not spontaneous start to flower, then time the onset for commersial resons.

If your orchids does not flower, your conditions is not right OR the plants is not mature enough.

Remember that commersial growers grows under PERFECTconditions with total control of light, humidity, temperature, water AND nutritions. THEN you can start manipulate the onset of flowering. The amount of flower depends mostly on how strong the plants are.

---------- Post added at 10:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:15 AM ----------

For your Cattleyas, they have distinct growth cycle that they follow. If grown under right conditions during the cycle (not necessary the same year around) they will flower the same time every year. To shift the flowering period you need to alter the growing cycle (growth-rest-flowering or growth-flowering-rest)!

Phalaenopsis (especially commersial multi hybrids) does only prosuce vegitable growth if the temperature is above 26 degree Celsius (79 F). When grown 4-5 strong leaves you can lower the temperature to around 17 degree Celsius (62 F) to trigger flower stem formation. The phalaenopsis will then take about 90 days to open the buds enough for commersial sale!
This is why phalaenopsis up in "the north" normaly flowers December to February as the temperature in most windows decrease in late August to September triggering flowering.


Everthing above is for mature plants.

As Magnus said, manipulating environmental conditions, such as day-night intervals and temperature, is to control the time of flowering of plants that are mature and vigorous enough to flower anyway. You are not going to get more flowers from a plant than it would normally produce nor are you going to get flowers from a plant that is too immature or weak to normally flower.

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

In all honesty, I was really asking more as a theoretical than anything else... most of my plants are actually still several years from maturity.
(They seem to be doing well though, so yay!)
Haha I'm too broke to buy mature plants...

My very few mature plants are budding nicely... the reason I posted is more just to get an idea of how possible it is to manipulate specifically when your mature ones do put out their flowers (like if you know ahead of time there's a show coming up, for instance).
Some day, I'll be able to use all this advice from you guys and actually bloom all my little babies... years from now. :) Thanks!

Also though--thank you!!--I did learn from you guys what I might need to do to get my one stubborn mature phal to bloom. It's SUPER healthy and all perky and has sooo many leaves and roots.
And still refuses to flower.
So maybe I'll move it to a colder spot, like Magnus suggested... I really want to see it spike!

Commercial growers manipulate temp, fertilizers, water, and light with a variety of plants, (poinsettias for instance) in order to get all the plants on the same bloom schedule and to be ready just when they are needed; Hausermann's orchids in Chicago used to induce many Cattleya and Cymbidium varieties to bloom just in time for Mother's day - the day AFTER Mother's day they start chopping all the blooms off the stock plants to conserve the plant's strength - I just cringed when I watched it years ago.
This is great for commercial growers, but I like having something in bloom all the time, rather than get everything at once, personally.
Fun post!
Steve