I bought an inexpensive lux meter the other day to finally have a clearer grasp of how much light my orchids were getting.
Before I bought the thing, I had guessed that my plants were receiving an amount of light on the low end of their requirements, but still within an acceptable range. Boy was I wrong!
It turns out they are receiving more like
one tenth of their requirements. This is blowing my mind a bit...shouldn't they be
dead at this point?
The paph/phals are receiving around 1169 lux, as shown here...much less than their minimum light requirements of 10,000-15,000 lux.
Not much better for this oncidium, which is receiving 2,290 lux (the meter is in x10 mode here) instead of the recommended 20,000.
I must be missing something because this just doesn't seem right.
My sources for light requirements are the
AOS culture sheets. Lux are roughly converted into footcandles by dividing by ten.
More details available in my
blog entry.
I got a light meter, and am surprised at the readings
Threaded Mode
