Confused with light set up - Any advice is appreciated
 

Hi orchid friends!

So this whole growing-under-lights deal is stressing me out. Mainly because I don't know if my orchids are happy, and I want to get the most out of the lights I have installed.

So I recently moved up to 56 degree N, and the lack of sunlight naturally slows the growth of my orchids. I bought two reflective light fixtures with one cool CFL and one warm CFL bulb (1600 lumens) to mitigate this to some extent.

I have 9 phals and 1 oncidium in front of a dim window, the oncidium is placed in the middle and receives more of the light from the CFL's because it's taller, and the phals are scattered around it. So the first week and a half, I was totally burning my orchids.. their leaves started turn red.. so I moved the lights higher. At the moment, the phals are about 15 inches from the centre of the bulbs. The oncidium is closer, about 8-10 inches away from the bulbs. The lights are now on 12 hours a day, even during daytime when they are still receiving low light from the dim window.

My question is, am I using the most out of my lights? Is the set up I have now possibly still harming my orchids? Picture of set up below :)

It's frustrating that this isn't part of my common sense, but I feel like I have to learn at some point, and what's a better way to learn than making mistakes and asking questions? right?? no? :biggrin::biggrin:

Any tips would be very helpful!

Right! But... don't let it frustrate you. It's supposed to be FUN! :) If you make a mistake just try something different. The set up looks good to me. The main thing is they get enough light if you are getting leaf tinting it is ok, and you will know when you get blooms. Once you get it down pat you can get a bigger rack and more lights!

It looks good to me. Any extra light they can get in the winter really helps. I have a lamp like the ones you are using in our basement. It has a Sunblaster light bulb in it and they really love it.

I think you can put them a lot closer to the plants than that, and they should both be the same height, so that the beams overlap each other.

Don't forget that the "1600 lumen" quoted output is right at the bulb, and if all of that light was contained in one square foot, that would be 1600 foot-candles intensity. As you move the lamp farther from the plants, that drops off by the inverse of the square of the distance - i.e, if you have 1600 fc at 1" from the lamp, twice as far away - 2" - it'll only be 1/4 of that.

CFLs aren't the best option (essentially none of the light emitted from the center of the coil gets to the plants), but it's certainly better than nothing at all.

Thank you all! I guess it'll just be trial and error for me.

Ray,

I'm gonna start inching it closer every few days or so.. I just became scared when I saw that all my orchids were getting a red tinge to them, so I moved them much farther away. There were very close to the lights beforehand.

The oncidium needs considerably more light than do the phals.

If the lamps are pointing straight down over the oncidium, and the phals to the perimeter, much as they are arranged now, then they will get less light.

Where are you located in Canada? You can try and get a light meter and record some values, so you have some sort of objective data that you can base your distance on. The recommended levels generally don't apply to artificial lighting. Don't stress - not enough light won't kill the plants :)

Calvin,

I'm located in Fort McMurray... cold winters and little sun :p yea, i understand not enough light won't kill them, but i still would like them too grow a bit in the winter :D

Save your pennies and get a T5 unit. You will be glad you did, but I think what you have will work for now.

I do use CFLs as supplemental lighting for my phals and paphs, but I grow my oncidiums and cattleyas under T5s . I get great results with the T5s. The phals under the CFLs do okay, but my oncidiums are my reliable bloomers and now I'm thinking the difference might be the quality of light the phals are getting compared to the oncidiums.

I will probably just do that.. I always perceived T5 units as a more skilled alternative.. but might as well learn to grow under T5's!