Fun and congrats on the bloom! What do you mean switch from shop-lights to grow lights? Do you mean from regular home depot 40W T8s to those horticultural 40W T8s or do you mean switching to 40W CFLs :)

Oh I mean from the regular old home depot 40W T8s (tubes) to horticultural 40W T8s . that's what I did. the horticultural ones cost about $10 each versus like $5 each but it seems to have been worth it.

Your catt is beautiful, Amy. Congratulations on cracking the code! Amazing how sometimes you have to just keep trying til you hit the right thing.

PS I use grow/bloom bulbs, too.

Very nice work on getting the Catt to bloom! Some have suggested that it cant be done under standard fluorescents, only under HID type lamps. Please do not tell my Catts and Dens and Cymbidium though, they have been blooming happily under my converted T-8 fixtures all along. I do overdrive mine though so I get a bit more light than the average unmodified fixture (and more heat and higher electricity bills). All my plants are grown under lights and in the winter here they get very little natural light. I do try to summer the higher light species outside, weather permitting.
What surprised me was that you found a horticulture T-8 tube! I assume your using the 48" length. I have not seen them at my local HD, only T-12 tubes. I usually just use 5000K, 6500K or a mix. What is the brand if you do not mind me asking?
Richard

That is just beautiful Amy!! What a great feeling!! My problem child Max tenuifolia is in spike also. I stuck that baby right *in* the morning sun and BOOM!!
Good Luck to you on the next blooms!! And, pictures pictures!!
Pat.....

Richard - the bulbs i bought are actually 40 watt T12 sorry - my mistake. I still don't understand all that "T" stuff. heheh. the brand is GE, package is green and says EcoLux Technology Plant and Acquarium F40.. 48"

thanks for the comments everybody. Pat - congrats on your Max Tenuifolia!

Amy

The T(followed be number) just means the diameter .. .T12s are REALLy fat...T8s are thinner and T5s are super thin (I just got some and I was so scared I'd snap them in half just by transporting them home)

It's interesting that the switch made them bloom - it means that it was a spectrum problem instead of an intensity problem (since horticultural lamps only differ by the type of light they put out.) Either way, glad you found this out! It will definitely prompt me to look more into the spectrum story. Do you happen to know the color temperatures of your previous home depot tubes? Thanks~

hello, Amy, your catts are beautiful. congrats. may i ask how far are the lights from the plants?
sue

Amylee, I love your story!!! For so many months recently, we had drilled into our heads that we needed 10 billion watt cfl's to grow anything!!!Just about burned the house down!! Thanks for sharing your triumph! :))

"Just about burned the house down!!"

t-bred I hope that is an attempt at humor or is there a story behind it. Please tell us you are joking and you didn't really have a problem and all is well.

Brooke

Brooke, I was so excited a few months ago I found some 85w cfl's. As we had been told over and over and over again-GIVE THEM MORE LIGHT!!!! Within the first couple hours I had them plugged in there was an awful smell coming from my basement,the base of the bulb was completely melted. Fortunatly I was at home!!! The smell took days to get rid of though. I personally will never again use anything larger than a 42w. They work just fine for what I grow. Thanks for your concern :)

Not sure of the lumens on the grow lights, but if you look closely you can find warm and cool T12's at big box stores that can generate 3400 lumens each, pretty impressive for a standard T12. 6 years ago when I first started with orchids, I used the Grolux? bulbs on my grow cart. The price of bulbs was expensive and at that time I had to order on-line to find them in the quantities I needed ($$$), after reading about the use of mixed warm and cool I switched to the standard bulbs. Once I started using the 3400 lumen varieties, I started seeing a difference. I pay @$3 each (I use 12 bulbs so $36 vs. $120, that's 2 more orchids I could buy) for the 3400 lumen Bathroom and Daylight bulbs at Lowes. I think the color is 3100K and 5000K respectively.

HTH,

Bob

Hmmm i still do not fully understand all that stuff, but before I switched to these plant and acquarium lights, i was also using a combination of half warm white and half cool white. i do not remember what the brand was or anything though. maybe it is a coincidence.

Amy, great report! Calvin, thanks for the explanation about the fluorescent bulb number system. I didn't know that. While we're on the topic of light, what does anybody think of this? It would supplement natural light from an east/southeast window so I'd probably choose the daylight bulb.

Overkill?

Here is a link that might be useful: Hydrofarm CFL System

T-bred, yes, thank goodness you were home. I don't know **anything** about "lights" .....but in reading some of that "MORE LIGHT" ...ah ...stuff, I use to wonder if people were putting home and LIFE at risk. Not everyone knows about overloading circuits and such. Not everyone's wiring will handle one billion watts - more, more, more!! It seems to me, if I remember correctly, that "one" certain person had to call the fire department to "her" place more that once, because of smoke coming from the fuse box (?). I'm glad it wasn't worse T-bred, and I think Amy and Bob there are proof that MORE is NOT always better......;0)
Pat............

John - I've heard mixed things about the higher wattage CFLs...the hydroponics store where I used to get my lights swears that they no longer sell anything above 65 watts because they burn out too quickly...my 65watter has been chugging along for about 2 years now. You could try experimenting (although that's a bit of an expensive experiment!) How's your HID setup doing for you? I was considering low wattage (150W) ceramic metal halides which apparently have fantastic spectra, and I even bought some bulbs but the ballasts are too annoying to wire/buy here in Canada.

t-bred - re the burning, that's crazy!! Sounds like a faulty ballast...while I do think CFLs are great inventions, I always feel a little guilty (I think I've mentioned this before) because each bulb has the entire ballast packed into it (versus tube lights, where the ballast is in the fixture)...so every time you replace a bulb, you're throwing away all that circuitry and stuff.

Are you growing in the basement? Personally (my opinion!!) I've found CFLs not the best option at lighting areas with no additional light....the reason is that in most of these situations you need quite a bit of light over a large area, so while CFLs give you a good spotlight over a small area, you'll need a lot of them to have a decent sized grow area. I've opted for tube lights because they let me have an even intermediate light over a wide area which is pretty neat especially when working with shelves. I adjust intensity by distance from the tubes.

Also, if you think about it, a CFL is just a thin fluorescent tube curled around and around onto itself....so while you get a concentration of light from the point source of the CFL, you do get a degree of light loss as well. T5s are nice because they're like unwrapped CFLs, so the light is spread out over a wide area. :)

Hey,

Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of 85 watt CFL's. I've been burning both spiral and the aquarium type CFL's for 8-16 months. IMO for high light lovers indoors, they can't be beat. I replaced a 400watt MH and a 250watt HPS system with 6 85 watt CFLs and now overall get less heat and much better growth and blooming for those plants. For me, the advantage of using multiple CFL's is that I can move them around/up and down and get them much closer to more plants than I could with a single larger light. BTW: I've never had an issue with any of my CFL's causing problems or burning out (knock on wood).

I still won't give up my 3-tiered cart with T12's, as it really maximizes my indoor growing space. I just need to put the appropriate plants under the appropriate lights.

John, If it were me I'd consider trying 2 lower wattage (55-85) CFL bulbs in different 'colors' so you can adjust them individually. You might also want to take a look a AH Supply (www.ahsupply.com) they have some attractive solutions for about the same price using aquarium CFL lights, fixtures and hoods.

My 2 cents,

Bob

t-bred I'm so glad you were home and caught the problem before it became a BIG problem.

I tried to interest my husband in the higher watt CFL's for a couple of my indoor (very dark, no natural light) set-up prior to the g/h. He studied and researched and said no, if I wanted to redo the light stands, it would be with HID lamps. We already had two of the 1000 watters on a traveler and would go with the smaller bulbs without the traveler since I wanted three stands redone. He said in the long run it was cheaper than the CFL's required to cover the same area. Instead of redoing all those stands, he opted for a g/h :>)

John have you checked out Farm Tek for the light system you are interested in?

Brooke

Here is a link that might be useful: Farm Tek

Calvin, yeah it is kind've expensive. What I'm most impressed with is the reflector - I don't think I need that much bulb for the application I'm considering. Since the ballast is in the bulb (?) maybe I can just get the reflector and use a lower wattage bulb. Assuming it's an incandescent type socket, those are rated for maximum wattage and anything less is ok. Right?

The HID setup is fine, but I have to reconcile myself to warmth tolerant orchids - it gets warm in there in the summer. It's fine - a lot of cattleyas squeeze into the warm category even though they're intermediate growers by and large. And the other thing is, you know, it's a small space. Surprisingly flexible though. If I had the space, I'd happily expand it. It's proven it can bloom a wide range of orchids, and I can work with it pretty well.

Bob, thanks also for the guidance. I sorta felt like 125 watts was a lot higher than most people here were talking about. Esp. with natural light available. It's such a restricted space I'd only be able to put a couple of medium sized plants there and can't really mess around with two bulbs. I'll check out AH Supply. Thanks!

And Brooke thanks for the link. I looked for cheaper and couldn't find it. You did it!

John