Lighting questions

[mindy1]

I have all of my orchids in what is called a Florida room. The room faces the south and gets quite a bit of sunlight on good days from around 9:00 am to around 4:00 pm. I think I need to supplement light in there to really have my collection thrive. If anyone has any suggestions as to what I may need to do please help.

All of my orchids look very healthy, and are growing. I do not think there is enough light though to enduce blooming. I have also never had a successful seed pod from pollinating my orchids and again I think it is because of the lack of light.

[Daniel S. Barrett]

Hi Mindy,
I'm sure the more experienced will be more help to you with a southern light exposure than I here, but, it seems most folks do very well with a southern exposure. And have no problems with blooming & pollinating. Prehaps you need to cut back on your high nitrogen formula fertilizer if thats what your using, and use some of the blooming formula instead, lowering the room temperature at night will also encourage your plants to bloom. As far as indoor lighting however, I do my winter growing under lights, & I'm very satisfied with using Metal Halide lighting, many folks opt for using flouresence. there are many types available out there.

[mayres]

Mindy - give us some more details of how many plants and what genera. Lighting will vary considerably depending on what kind you have.....

[mindy1]

I have vandas, catts, phals, oncidiums, ondons, brassias, paps, epidens, dens and one cymbidium.

[mindy1]

Oh and I have about 40 plants.