It actually comes down to the numbers. Phals are commonly believed to need between 1000 and 1500 footcandles on average for an average day. For any number of reasons a day might be less than 12 hours but it can never be longer than that in ANY part of the world where phals grow naturally. So lets use 10 hours and 1000 foot candles to make the math easier. 10(h) X 1000(FC) = 10,000FC/dy. A four tube fluorescent fixture can probably deliver 1000FC so, if phals are all you grow then a 10 hour run time of four tubes year round will be all you need. Thing is, it would be the rare four tube fixture that could deliver 1000fc to all parts of the coverage area. The light out towards the end of the tubes might be only half as much, also, depending on their genetics many phals actually need a skoosh more footcandles than 1000 so if you added a couple of hours and made a 12 hour run time, again year round, you would be in good stead. Now lets take an Oncid as an example. Oncids are commonly described as needing 2500 - 3000 footcandles, again for around 10 hours. 2500 x 10 = 25,000FC/dy. Right away you can see that a four tube fixture will have to run all day and all night to put 24,000 into the plant. Unfortunately plants need a lights out period to process the energy that they collect during the day. If you get from this that you cannot grow Oncids under tubes alone you would be correct. This is the point where the naysayers say: "well, I have only a twin tube fixture and I bloom Oncids all the time". Do you really? Did you actually have the oncid in nothing else other than artificial light from one bloom to the next? Very likely not. Either the plant was purchased NBS with a lot of the footcandles already in the bank or there was additional window light boosting the amount of delivered footcandles or for some part of the year, usually summer, the oncid grew outdoors. But wait, all is not lost. If you can get the output of the four tube rig boosted another 500FC over the spot where an oncid is growing 1500(FC) X 16(H) = 24,000FC/dy. Close enough for government work as they say. You can see that these run times are completely independent of seasonal adjustment. Seasons as they exist in tropical and sub-tropical areas do not involve large changes in daylength the way they do in North America and Europe. They mostly involve changes in the relative amounts of rainfall. I would be remiss, since I've gone this far into it, to not discuss that minority of plants that require changing daylength in order to bloom. Some Cattleya are about all that come readily to mind but there are others. Thing is, they are very, very much a minority of the orchids that we usually grow and just as if you had a Poinsettia or Christmas Cactus you wanted to re-bloom you would probably deal with it as an individual, rather than adjust the light cycle of your entire collection to suit the needs of just one or two plants. So, in summary, if you want to know how long to run your lights you have to know how much on average the same plants usually receive per day, then you have to know how much light in footcandles you lights produce and whatever number of hours it takes to get your lights to produce that number of footcandles is the proper runtime. Of course there is considerable variation, both in the plants and in light equipment. This means you don't actually have to know everything to the last decimal place but it does mean that if you have an Oncid under four tubes in a basement and it isn't blooming after three years it wouldn't be reasonable to blame anything else other than light for the lack of success. I haven't even touched Cattleya's and Cycnodes and other species that are highly variable. Some need tremendous amounts of light and will mandate some kind of CFL or HID or natural light combination to do well. H

I make about 4.5 cu yards annually. Estimate that I enjoy 300 hours of pleasure in doing so and don't have to pay for the experience. So thatÂs about 66 hours per yard. 85 % of the material comes from off site. Leaves and green grass clippings come from the townÂs lawn refuse area located 2 miles away. Frequently combine trips in the pickup with other errands. Two sources for horse manure one 5 miles away, the other two miles off the direct route to the mother-in-laws house. I Always combine trips there. Recently I have been making more than enough for my needs and give away about half a yard or so every year. I know I could get 10 yards of so called compost dropped in my driveway for $30.00 per yard plus delivery of probably $60.00 or so. But it wouldnÂt be as good as my own home made stuff and I would have been deprived of the pleasure of making the absolute best homemade compost it the state of Michigan except for maybe one guy who might also make some good stuff if he doesnÂt let it get too wet. And finally, no. It does not costÂs more to make the very best compost than it would to purchase some compost like material. But the labor and time involved is significant and therefore only worth it if you enjoy the endeavor. Most consumers do not know what hi quality compost looks like and can easily be sold material that is said to be compost but might actually be leaf mulch, aged horse or cow manure, combination of those things sometimes mixed with soil or sand to command an ever higher price. All of the above being said, If you have to buy it then go ahead and buy it. Just look at it first and make sure that it is suitable for your needs before having a dump truck load of the stuff dumped in your driveway. Bill Hill

On a quarter acre, we never make enough either. One round wire bin about 8ft in diameter and 4 ft high that we use for grass clippings and chopped leaves and two black plastic composters that have a locking lid that I can add table scraps to. We compost passively and wait about 12 months for finished compost. One lucky section of the garden gets a bonanza every year. Of course, the roses have to have a little too. I don't add compost to the veggie beds, but rather I use cover crop and a heavy chopped leaves mulch. We use the grass clippings with newspaper to mulch the beds sometimes. I receive some of my neighbor's leaves and we just run them over with the mower and add them to the large bin.

We make compost on a large scale. A neighbor of ours brings us several loads of goat poop mixed with hay a few days a week, and dumps it in our compost pile. My husband turns it with the bucket loader on the front of his tractor. We add tons of leaves. We are lucky enough to have all we need for all our gardens and new raised beds that we make. We also use the Ruth Stout method of mulching our vegetable garden, thick layers of spoiled hay, layered with leaves, which keep the weeds down while composting in place. The worm castings under the layer of hay was several inches deep this year!