Natural winter light for my phal!? Does it look TOO dark now?

[mytwogirls]

I live in Nebraska and my phal is placed in a large bay window facing west. I cut the spike off a couple months ago because it was dry, black and had no signs of life. It bloomed late spring. I want it to spike again (I have never had it re-spike as I got it this spring when it was in full bloom) and I am wondering if it has enough light. I have heard dark green leaves are a sign of not enough light. I do not want to use bulbs, but would the winter light be enough for it Does it look like it is getting enough now?

Here is a very recent picture of it



and another



Please excuse bite marks....my two year old daughter LOVES to eat mommy's orchid. She said it was yummy

[mehitabel]

It's hard to be accurate about the color, because photo color depends on the lighting, etc. However, your leaves don't look the too-dark green to me. They look a healthy green. A west window is a lot of light when the sun shines, so it depends on on what the proportion of sunny days is. Just be sure to keep the water and fertilizer in balance with the light -- less light, less water and fertilizer. Growth will slow until spring, probably, but don't try to push it along with fertilizer.

I don't blame you for not wanting to go for a total llight set up, but if you have a floor lamp with a compact fluorescent in it that you can direct toward the phal, that can give a little extra light if you want to do that on sunless days.

Your phal may want to do a little more growing before blooming again, but if it doesn't spike in spring, it will probably do so next fall, after a summer of fattening itself up.

[Ron]

Hi, I looks pretty good colour to me.
My way of testing is too see if your hand will cast a faint shadow over the leaves, that is how much light mine get in winter and they spike up well.
Warmth is perhaps the biggest issue in winter, try to keep it above 65F at night would help greatly.
Best of luck
Ron

[Ms...Mary]

But Phal Love a little cold, that what triggers them to spike.
West window is good now were in winter light.
Watering One Ice Cube a week. RF orchids see there video.
Always check for bugs.
I finely have two spikes back porch with sun all day long 75% shade cloth from Home depot. I check them everynight for bugs And Im talking 3am, With my little flash light.
I'm out of control. LOLOL

[mytwogirls]

Oh my gosh, 3 a.m.! Too funny! I just keep staring at it thinking "Hmmm, this plant looks dark" but then again I don't want to fry it either. It is above 65 in the house all the time. The west window I let it have afternoon sun (3-5 p.m.)

[Schlyne]

I think it looks fine to me. I live in Omaha, and my phal leaves are about the same I think, but my phals are in bloom at the moment. I haven't had the chance to try reblooming them yet.

[orchidlover55]

I think the color looks nice and it looks really healthy. There is some phals that bloom more than others and some phals that stay bloomed a lot longer than others. I have one that I have never seen bloom and I have had it almost a year but then again I have phals that sit right next to it that have bloomed two to three times.
Do you remember what color it was? Just curious, I have noticed that some of mine take longer to bloom and they are certain colors, that is just me.
Another thing a phal likes to stay in one place after you put it there. It don't like a change too much. It will need from eight to twelve hours of light also. Like Mehitabel said, if you have a floor lamp put a bulb in it and direct it to you phal. You can buy the florescent bulbs and that way it won't burn your orchid with a hot light. I think if you put the proper light on it , let the temp drop 15 degrees at night, water it properly, fertilize it , it may not take too long to get a spike Good Luck

[mytwogirls]

Originally Posted by orchidlover55

I think the color looks nice and it looks really healthy. There is some phals that bloom more than others and some phals that stay bloomed a lot longer than others. I have one that I have never seen bloom and I have had it almost a year but then again I have phals that sit right next to it that have bloomed two to three times.
Do you remember what color it was? Just curious, I have noticed that some of mine take longer to bloom and they are certain colors, that is just me.
Another thing a phal likes to stay in one place after you put it there. It don't like a change too much. It will need from eight to twelve hours of light also. Like Mehitabel said, if you have a floor lamp put a bulb in it and direct it to you phal. You can buy the florescent bulbs and that way it won't burn your orchid with a hot light. I think if you put the proper light on it , let the temp drop 15 degrees at night, water it properly, fertilize it , it may not take too long to get a spike Good Luck

The color was white with a purplish color in the middle. It does sit by the window in the same place I do not move it. It gets indirect light through a thin window shade, does that count as light? It is just so dark and gloomy here for the past week or so I was concerned. The temps have been good for spiking, I was just concerned about the light. I really don't fertilize. Should I? What type?

[janet_a]

i wouldn't worry about the light. plant looks fat and happy to me (except for the nibbling). as mentioned, if you have a lamp near it you may want to extend your day length a couple hours, but you don't have to.

use a balanced fertilizer, like jack's 20-20-20, or if all else fails, schultz 10-15-10. i'm told schultz makes a liquid 10-10-10 but i've never seen it... i fertilize half strength every other week. oh, and NO ICE CUBES.

[mytwogirls]

What is up with ice cubes? Why would I do that? I am just curious, actually have been searching for that answer for awhile and to no avail. Someone tell me about the temperature of water when I do water. I usually do warm tap water.

[grandmapenguin]

Some retailer got the crazy idea to put this on the tags when they sent them out to the Big Box Stores and it was run like crazy. Every authority I have heard speak really poo poos even the thought of it.

[janet_a]

yes, and someone else further upthread mentioned the ice cube method.

[Undergrounder]

Well let me play Devil's advocate on two fronts, just to keep this fair and balanced (We report, You decide!)

If your instinct is telling you not enough light, it's probably not getting enough light. Normally we overestimate how light a spot is, so if you're thinking it's too dark i think it probably is.

Long, thin leaves are a sign of not enough light, and that top one is slightly thin. Slow growth is also a sign of not enough light, so if it's not shooting out new leaves and roots fairly regularly (or at least doesn't always appears to be doing -something-), probably not enough light.

But a couple of afternoon hours at least it's getting a bit. I wouldn't resort to lights, if it gets enough light in the summer it's probably not worth the expense. But perhaps there is a window you can put it in that gets southerly sun, which is probably OK in the winter as long as it's not too big a difference.

The ice cubes thing is purely recommended for people who don't know how much to water their orchid. It's just a standard measurement, about 50ml or whatever it is that makes up an ice cube. It has nothing to do with the coldness. But it's only ever recommended for people with orchids in sphagnum moss, whereas yours is in bark. It might make sense to water weekly with cubes in moss, because it limits how much water you put in, but watering with bark is very different. With bark you really want to run water through it until it's pouring out the bottom. With sphagnum moss you just kind of 'top it up' with water without running water through it.

[11Orchid126]

"It gets indirect light through a thin window shade."

In the winter the plant should get all the light it can, and a thin shade of any kind will prevent that. Your plant should have nothing between it and the window. (The books tell you to have a curtain, but that's old advice, not for every part of the country, especially the light starved north and east). Also, the light drops dramatically for every few inches the plant is back from the window. Our eyes can't see it, but the plant knows. Listen to your instincts.

[vcuchick]

room temp distilled water is best...tap water can often contain disolved mineral solids that could be harmful to your plant!!!

[11Orchid126]

Vcuchick's advice is good if you don't know the TDS (total disolved solids) of your water. If you can't get distilled water, purified water (R/O) is okay and a bit cheaper. I mix half purified water and half tap.

[PhalPal]

The color of leaves can also be genetic; I have phals with lime green leaves and others very deep green. Both are receiving the same light and healthy as can be. If you decide to get into orchids a bit more and are worried about light, I would recommend a little hand held light meter. I find mine invaluable especially when I move my plants all over the house, inside and out. Even growing under lights it helps me to place them appropriately under the bulbs. It is a $40 investment, but IMHO it has been worth every penny to me. I don't wonder/worry any more.
The best indicator for you will be if you get any spikes this season. Phals that do not get enough light won't flower very well, if at all.

[mytwogirls]

Oh my gosh thank you guys so much. I noticed today I have another new leaf growing. This will be the third new leaf it has grown since I bought it this past late spring. How often should they be sprouting new leaves? How many per year? I have read too many leaves at once can also be a sign of not enough light. The last leaf is fully mature, and yes it is thin, thanks for pointing that out. I do have a floor lamp, so I will give it a shot.

[mehitabel]

Originally Posted by 11Orchid126

"It gets indirect light through a thin window shade."

In the winter the plant should get all the light it can, and a thin shade of any kind will prevent that. Your plant should have nothing between it and the window. (The books tell you to have a curtain, but that's old advice, not for every part of the country, especially the light starved north and east). Also, the light drops dramatically for every few inches the plant is back from the window. Our eyes can't see it, but the plant knows. Listen to your instincts.

Hear, Hear! Couldn't agree more. That shade needs to be up during the day! For the first week to ten days after raising the shade, monitor the leaves while the sun is shining in to make sure they do not get too hot. (Just touch them -- barely warm is okay, warm to hot = burning). If too hot, move the plant away temporarily a foot or so further away from the window, then move it slowly closer to the window as the leaves get used to the higher light.

In summer if the sun gets too hot on the leaves, you can run a fan across the leaves for the couple of hottest hours of the day (this is what I do), or move it another foot or so away from the window. In winter it needs every iota of light it can get.

Don't worry about too many leaves at once. Concentrate on giving your phal the best conditions you can, including the best light you can. New leaves do tend to be thin, but will be too thin and delicate in poor light. Good light helps phals grow tight, tough growth that is more resistant to pests and disease. In poor light, growth is thin and floppy. Light is what plants use to photosynthesis, it's a necessary condition for good growth.

Phals ordinarily grow 3-4 leaves a year.

Consider the heat if you put a floor lamp near it. An incandescent bulb can easily get too hot. If you put a compact fluorescent in the lamp, you will get light without escessive heat. But even so, start off with the lamp maybe a foot away from the plant and gradually move nearer if the leaves stay cool.

[Schlyne]

Originally Posted by Undergrounder

The ice cubes thing is purely recommended for people who don't know how much to water their orchid. It's just a standard measurement, about 50ml or whatever it is that makes up an ice cube. It has nothing to do with the coldness. But it's only ever recommended for people with orchids in sphagnum moss, whereas yours is in bark. It might make sense to water weekly with cubes in moss, because it limits how much water you put in, but watering with bark is very different. With bark you really want to run water through it until it's pouring out the bottom. With sphagnum moss you just kind of 'top it up' with water without running water through it.

Gahhhhh.. No wonder I screwed up my orchid in moss I tried to squeeze as much extra water out of the pot as I could too.

[mehitabel]

From everything I've read, orchid roots are very sensitive to the buildup of fertilizer salts in the medium. For that reason, it is important to run pure water copiously thru the pot at least every third or fourth watering.

Adding just a little water to sphag would prevent overwatering, but if attention isn't paid to regular leaching of the pot, poisonous salts will build up in the pot.

[mytwogirls]

I would allow the window shade up, but when I felt the leaves being too hot, I would pull the shade so they would not burn in the summer. I will not do that this coming summer, thanks for the tip. Can I ask another dumb question: How DO you fertilize? I have the mix to a gallon of water, but how much water do I pour over the phal? Like a regular watering? Do I REALLY need to fertilize? Does this affect light at all?

[mehitabel]

Originally Posted by mytwogirls

I would allow the window shade up, but when I felt the leaves being too hot, I would pull the shade so they would not burn in the summer. I will not do that this coming summer, thanks for the tip. Can I ask another dumb question: How DO you fertilize? I have the mix to a gallon of water, but how much water do I pour over the phal? Like a regular watering? Do I REALLY need to fertilize? Does this affect light at all?

Hi, MyTwoGirls. You are right to worry about the leaves getting too hot, and pulling the shade for a few hours would be okay, if you are home. Shade down all the time is not good, and that's even more so in winter. If you're not home, try one of the other methods for reducing the intensity of light during the hottest hours. It does take some fiddling to get it right, so if you work you have to do it on weekends when you are home.

Fertilizer: The first rule is water first, before fertilizing. Don't fertilize or apply any chemical to a dry plant. When you water, pour a lot of water thru. Once the plant is watered, when you are fertilizing, just pour til the water starts out the bottom.

Do you really need to fertilize? Fertilizing supplies the plant with the building blocks it uses for photosynthesis. So it will influence the plants growth. Phals are moderate feeders-- they will benefit from fertilizer, but of course, too much is bad. I wouldn't say fertilizer affects light, but definitely the amount of light you can supply affects how much you can/should fertilize. With less light, less fertilizer, because growth is slower. With more light, growth is faster, more fertilizer can be used. Too much fertilizer in low light = weak, spindly growth that's susceptible to disease.

But you don't *have* to fertilize. When we have long, gloomy periods here during winter, I often just cut out the fertilizer for a while til the sun is shining bright again. Or if life is hectic, I skip it. However, I notice a lot of new growth when I start fertilizing again.

When you do fertilize, dilute the fertilizer to 1/4 of the dilution recommended on the bottle, and do it more often-- every watering. Then once a month or so, leach with pure water, no fertilizer. Too little is very much better than too much, especially at one time.

Hope this helps

[Ben G]

YUMY phal

[koshki]

Just out of curiosity, how long (hours/days/weeks) would it take for the "too little light" effect to show? (Yes, I know I need to go get that light meter, but I'm too busy bidding on orchids on eBay!)

[Undergrounder]

Originally Posted by mehitabel

From everything I've read, orchid roots are very sensitive to the buildup of fertilizer salts in the medium. For that reason, it is important to run pure water copiously thru the pot at least every third or fourth watering.

Adding just a little water to sphag would prevent overwatering, but if attention isn't paid to regular leaching of the pot, poisonous salts will build up in the pot.

I hear what you're saying mehitabel, but i have to completely disagree when it comes to plants in sphag, and phals especially. I've never had significant salt buildup in sphagnum moss, and with sphag you generally don't need to fertilise as much anyway, compared to say, bark. Of the Phals i have in sphagnum moss, i've had them growing for 1 - 2 years without ever running water through the pots and i haven't even seen any salt buildup let alone had any problems with it. On the other hand, running water through the sphag and letting it get sopping wet makes it a comfy bet for all kinds of fungus and mold that love the wet conditions. Letting it go dry and then soaking in cycles it is what gives you problems in sphag, whereas keeping it constantly and lightly damp (springy and cold to the touch, but not sloppy and wet) is a better way of watering, although there are exceptions.

But i grow a large chunk of my Phals in LECA (semi-hydroponics), and even with those i water completely from below and very rarely (every 6 months?) run water through the pot.

I get lots of visible fertiliser salt buildup on the surface of the LECA, and my roots couldn't care less. If a new root happens to grow straight into a patch of salt, then yes it sometimes stunts. But most of the time they just keep on growing happily. Under the surface itself salt doesn't really build up.

The difference between sphag and LECA is that LECA dries out very quickly on the surface. Drying out (evaporation leaves the salt behind) is what causes salt buildup more than any other factor. Because sphag stays moist all through the pot fairly evenly, the salt doesn't really get a chance to condense and build up in the medium itself. And so if you keep it fairly evenly moist (and don't allow it to dry out completely, like you shouldn't), then you won't have salt problems. Especially if you change the moss over every 1 - 2 years like it's recommended.

BUT, with bark its different because bark tends to be very uneven in how it dries. The top can dry very quickly and the bottom very slowly, which means salt does accumulate quicker in bark, and it tends to accumulate lower down in the medium itself, which definitely could cause you problems. Also because bark draws down Nitrogen as it decomposes, you need to fertilise bark more than sphagnum, and so you're putting more fertiliser salts in there in the first place. And finally, because bark breaks down and you get a lot of soil runoff, it helps to really flood water through it anyway to remove that. So yeah i would recommend a good drenching with every water in bark.

koshki: it's a long-term thing that you'll only notice by slow growth, thin leaves, darker leaves and no flowering. I find the effects of light in general (both good and bad) tend to take about 2 weeks to a month to notice a difference in growth speed.

[mehitabel]

Originally Posted by koshki

Just out of curiosity, how long (hours/days/weeks) would it take for the "too little light" effect to show? (Yes, I know I need to go get that light meter, but I'm too busy bidding on orchids on eBay!)

Hmmm. Good question. My guess is that after about 4 weeks, it is risking the health of the plants. I used to display blooming orchids on a chest in the interior of a room. After a month in that place, they would be starting to go downhill.

About the light meter. I think you can do fine without one. I do have one, but I don't think it's terribly accurate. It sometimes gives what I believe are unlikely readings. To test for too little light, I use the hand shade method instead-- your hand should cast a shadow when held between the plant and the light source. No shadow = light too dim. If you get a shadow, it should be a little fuzzy, not too hard and sharp.

To test for too much light, feel the leaves. My rule is, "When the leaves are actively warm, add shade (or more air)" ie, cool things down. Outdoors, add shadecloth; indoors, turn on a fan or move further away from the window.

Anyway, works for me. But if you're afraid you are not giving enough light, be extra careful not to overwater, and start looking for ways to increase it, because a whole winter of low light will do a lot of damage.

When increasing the light, move plants to within a couple of feet of a window, then gradually move closer to the window over a period of about two weeks.

[mehitabel]

That's very interesting, undergrounder. I can see how a wet-dry cycle for the sphag would make it get compacted. But, watering only a little contradicts everything I've read in so many different sources, which is mostly pretty heavy on the "water copiously, must leach, salts accumulate" advice for phals.

I appreciate your point of view, but would honestly be afraid to follow your advice.

However, I do agree sphag can be a great medium for anyone who gets the watering right.

[psyc1210]

About the number of leaves a Phal should grow each year...I really don't think there's a standard answer for that. I think it truly depends on genetics. Some species are slower growing than others.

[Undergrounder]

Originally Posted by mehitabel

That's very interesting, undergrounder. I can see how a wet-dry cycle for the sphag would make it get compacted. But, watering only a little contradicts everything I've read in so many different sources, which is mostly pretty heavy on the "water copiously, must leach, salts accumulate" advice for phals.

I appreciate your point of view, but would honestly be afraid to follow your advice.

However, I do agree sphag can be a great medium for anyone who gets the watering right.

That's OK, most people would be afraid to follow the orchid growing advice i give Trust me if i actually told you how i grow my Phals you'd think they'd all be dead by now.

We'll have to agree to disagree, and there are a lot more factors in it than could possibly be mentioned here, and in fact it is possible to grow happy roots in very wet sphag, as long as the roots are well adapted and the environmental conditions are tweaked to suit. But it's not worth complicating the situation to go through all those permutations.

And that's the problem. No single 'rule' or guideline or method of culture will ever actually work in all situations, in all different mediums, in all different environments. Only experience gives real understanding. And at the end of the day experience only gives you an understanding in your general conditions and they can be very different between growers.

[mehitabel]

Originally Posted by Undergrounder

No single 'rule' or guideline or method of culture will ever actually work in all situations, in all different mediums, in all different environments. Only experience gives real understanding. And at the end of the day experience only gives you an understanding in your general conditions and they can be very different between growers.

I think I can agree on that

[11Orchid126]

Mytwogirls, rather than pull down the shade and plunge the plants into total darkness, move the plant a half a foot or so back from the window and leave the shade up. If the leaves still feel warm, move it back a bit farther until you find a spot that the plant can tolerate yet still get the light it needs.

[mytwogirls]

Thanks you all for your advice and wise words. I will do that as far as fertilizer goes, now I know what to do. You guys rock, do you know that? In case you didn't you know now! :-)

[vcuchick]

wow. what an informative thread...thanks everyone!