P E Dean
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> queried thusly:
Anyone else growing orchids
under LEDs? I sure would like to hear
from anyone who is. Or to find books or websites with specific info,
sources for LED arrays with particular wavelengths,
etc.
I've been
experimenting with some LED Grow-Master lights:
http://www.led-grow-master.com/
(Disclaimer: the company sold them to me at distributor's prices to
determine their utility in growing orchids.)
I have
been growing orchids in sterile culture under these light sources, as
well as potted orchids. They seem to do the job for growing orchids in
flask; however, at this stage, they are largely chemotrophic (living on
the salts and sugars in the substrate), and even at very low levels of
illumination they do surprisingly well.
I should
think that LED illumination may one day be competitive with fluorescent
lights. Until such time that they can come down to the price of a $20
reflector and 2 x $4 bulbs, they are not a replacement. I wonder about
operating costs making up for it. At perhaps 5 watts total (for bulbs and
a DC transformer) versus, say, 32 watts of power from one T8 tube (a very
rough equivalent), you're spending an extra 27 watts of power. Used for
12 hours a day, that's 324 watt-hours, or about 3.24 cents per day at 10
cents per KWh. Over the course of a year, that works out to $11.83. A
commercial LED unit at, say, $100 versus a fluorescent unit at $12 (half
of a 2-tube array) would take 7.43 years to pay for itself. That doesn't
include the cost of changing bulbs every couple of years, and it's too
late at night for me to do the math on that.
It may
compare more favorably with metal halide, but I've only used MH once or
twice, and that was somebody else's money, not mine, so I can't remember
the math.
LEDs do
have the benefit of not having to remove quite so much heat when
illuminated. It may sound insignificant, but when I ran a growth chamber
with 14 kilowatts of fluorescent illumination, things got pretty far out
of parameters when the vent system went down.
"marianne haeck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spaketh
thusly:
Hello, someone told me
that it is impossible for Bulbophyllum to have
virus, is this true?
Someone is
gravely misinformed.
Incidentally- someone asked about paphs and virus. From:
http://image.fs.uidaho.edu/vide/descr541.htm
Orchid
fleck (?) rhabdovirus
Host
species include:
Coelogyne spp.,
Dendrobium spp. (and hybrids),
Miltonia spp.,
Odontoglossum spp.,
Oncidium spp. and
Paphiopedilum spp. - chlorotic areas often with necrotic centres
or rings.
See the
URL for a full list of susceptible species. The webpage comes with a list
of ten scientific references, at least nine of which are from refereed
publications.
Or, as the
doctoral student once screamed at me:
"My
plants are not virused!"
"Oh!
You've had them indexed, then."
"What's indexing?"
That was
the first sign of trouble, right there. The second was when she insisted
her plants would "have spots" if they were infected.
Cheers,
-AJHicks
Chandler,
AZ
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