My phal is looking pretty good, that new leaf is very pretty. The one leaf that was heavily sunburned just yellowed and shriveled up, and now it come completely off as you can see in the lower left.

It's interesting to see the orchid cope with an alteration of its growth pattern due to the disorderly damage my accidental machinations have caused. I'm curious how soon it will drop the other leaf, or if it will keep that one for a while.

So I'm pretty sure my plant is going to be perfectly fine. It may have sunburned somewhat, but it seems like it's just going to go through a weird regrowth phase. The leaf is definitely yellowing in a fairly normal manner now, although the 'burn' damage remains. Considering none of my other orchids show signs of burning, and I gave them all approximately the same nutrient regimen, I am going to rule out nutrient burn.

There are a few damaged spots on a couple other leaves, but only one shows any signs of dying off. The newly growing leaf seems perfectly healthy, so I'm optimistic for this orchid.

My Amaryllis is blooming again! Only one bloom this spring, but I wouldn't be surprised if I get another one in not too long.

You can go to this post regarding my thoughts on growing houseplants if you'd like to see pictures of the last time my amaryllis bloomed.

Unfortunately, one of my orchids is having what appears to be some difficulty. I'm not sure if this leaf damage was caused by a nutrient burn, excess sunlight, or if the plant is simply killing the leaf off in order to grow further. I have seen many orchid leaves shrivel up and die though, and this damage seems very unnatural. It's possibly some sort of pest, but I really don't think so. It is growing out a new leaf right now however, so I am optimistic about the health of the plant.

This type of orchid can also take a lot of sunlight, so I doubt that it's sun burn.

Anyone know what it is?

Plant Basics

I really like having house plants. Sometimes it seems like a chore, but ultimately they bring joy.

I also like to know how things work, so I've tried to learn how plants work. Although I have spent a good part on my life on a farm, my knowledge of plants was relatively minimal when I started having plants in my apartment in college.

There were really just a few fundamental things I had to learn about plants to make sure they would thrive. Here are some blooms from an amaryllis that I originally got from my mom. Unfortunately, because I have not created the right environment for them in the past couple years, they have not bloomed since. That's actually kind of nice, because the blooms are messy. At least they are pretty!

I was able to produce these blooms by relying on a few basic concepts.

• light

• nutrients + pH
• root medium
• temperature

  
  

The particular medium I used that successfully resulted in these huge blooms was a bit of coco coir mixed with perlite. Coco coir is a very interesting medium. I believe it is made from the ground up husks of mature coconuts. It can absorb a great deal of water, but when it reaches capacity extra water will run right through it. As you can see in the photo, it is quite fibrous. Coco coir is awesome, it has great moisture retention capabilities while allowing maximum oxygen to reach the roots. The only downside is that if you are using almost straight coco coir (mixed with a little perlite), you're going to have to use some sort of totally-encompassing nutrient solution as the coco coir offers little sustenance to the plant. I went with a chemical approach.



General hydroponics is probably best known as the workhorse of the indoor marijuana growing community. I don't grow weed, but this nutrient solution is awesome. It is no more expensive than most normal nutrient solutions (i.e. miracle grow), you just have to buy a bit more of it all at once. Shown here are two bottles that you have to mix in order to achieve the correct proportions of nutrients (according to your plant and period in the growing cycle). The 'FloraMicro' solution shown here is nitrogen-heavy (5-0-1 NPK), and the 'FloraBloom' solution is phosphorous and potassium heavy (0-5-4 NPK). Because I live in a very urban area with very basic tap water that comes out at about 8.2 pH, I have a bottle of phosphoric acid in order to drop the pH of the nutrient solution further than simply adding the NPK mix. Being able to precisely control the pH is absolutely required in a hydroponics growing system. If you let the pH get too high or too low, you prevent the plant from optimally absorbing nutrients. The same problem can occur in normal soil, but it usually takes a very long time for problems to surface while some external factor is causing your pH to rise or fall. If you're container gardening with coco coir like I do with my amaryllis, it's quite a bit more responsive than soil, but much more forgiving than in a water culture system. With not much more effort than maintaining a soil plant, a simple hydroponics solution can yield some very impressive houseplants.

Conceivably, an organic hydroponics system might be even easier to maintain, but I think learning how to play god with a plant using chemical nutrients is a useful learning tool. Your control over the plant's well-being is very apparent. When you burn a plant or starve it of nutrients when you're using chemicals, you can only blame yourself. If you use the chemicals right, the plant loves you!

the challenging part for most apartment dwellers

I have never been able to get a decent amount of light to my plants from natural sources. Some apartments have good light-producing windows, but they are few and far between. Also, living in a temperate zone, there is just not enough light to make houseplants bloom year-round. After you solve the limiting factor of nutrient and moisture uptake, the only thing that limits your plants is the amount of light they can effectively use. Some plants can't use as much light as others. The amaryllis does not seem to be particularly sensitive to light levels. I have been able to get them to thrive vegetatively on relatively low light, but exposing it to large amounts of sunlight is required for blooming.

Alternatively, you can provide your own indoor sunlight. The cheapest and most effective way to do this would be to buy four foot fluorescent shoplights from your local hardware store. The issue with these lights is that you want to get them as close to the plants as possible due to the inverse-square law. Essentially, this means that as your plants get farther from the light source, they get exponentially less light per unit of distance.

The important thing to realize about artificial light is that amount of electricity the bulb consumes in watts is not a measure of the light output of the bulb. This is why when you go to buy compact fluorescent lights in a store, you see the 'equivalent watts' of incandescent light that would be required to match the 10 or 20 watt CFL.

GE 26 Watt (100Watt equivalent) Energy Smart Spiral® T3 Light Bulb 3 Count #15517
This is because the most important measure of light for your plants is the number of lumens a bulb produces. Although spectra (color) of the light produced is also a very important concern, the overall production of light is where your focus should lie.

Although CFLs are a decent high-efficiency light solution for growing house plants, the cheapest way to go fluorescent is with the 4 foot tubes. Interestingly, the most common form of 4 foot fluorescent tubes, the 'T-12' size, is not the most efficient in terms of lumens/watts ratio, which is what you want to focus on. The T-10 size of bulbs has a higher lumens/watts ratio.

One important thing to realize about the 4 foot shop-light types of fixtures is that they require a 'ballast' in order to function properly. Essentially, CFLs are no different from the big tubes we've had around for years and years, but they have been designed so they do not require a ballast to regulate the current they receive from their power source. However, ballasts introduce a power inefficiency, and different ballasts are more or less efficient than others. This inherent inefficiency of the shop-light solution has to be factored into your lumens/watts ratio.

Because they produce little heat, fluorescent lamps have the advantage of being able to be placed very closely to the plants - preferably at a distance of less than 30 cm. Take advantage of this as much as possible. The inverse-square law is not your friend. In order to get maximum efficiency from your lights you have to sometimes go to great lengths.

Although fluorescents offer the best value for the money, and are very energy efficient, the premier solution for growing plants indoors is HID (high intensity discharge) lighting. These lights come in two main flavors that offer slightly different spectras and energy-efficiencies; high-pressure sodium (red spectra, most efficient) and metal-halide (blue spectra, slightly less efficient than HPS).

However, HID lights have several disadvantages.

• their ballasts can be quite loud

• bulbs can be expensive and fragile
• initial cost can be quite high
• they produce a large amount of heat, both from the bulb and from the ballast
• few stores carry them - sometimes you can get smaller wattage ones (50-150 watts) from Home Depot/Lowes that are marketed as 'security lights'

For many of these reasons, HID lighting is only intended for the most serious of indoor growers that demand an experience for their plants as close as possible to actual sunlight. However, one small 70 watt HID lamp can provide a huge amount of light for a vast number of house plants. Furthermore, the massive heat (and light) generated by the HID lamps require that you move the bulbs a good distance from your plants so as to not burn them. This can result in a far easier setup than trying to get your four-foot fluorescent fixtures no more than a foot away from each part of a given plant.

This 250 watt HID light could provide light for an impressive indoor garden, so for some people they are a perfect solution: Econogro Mini 250 Watt HPS Grow Light

However, if you can deal with the space-configuration/inverse-square law fight, go with the four-foot shoplights using T-10 bulbs. If you want cheap and easy space-configuration, go with CFLs. If you don't give a rats ass and just want the most awesome lights possible, get some HID, either metal-halide or high-pressure-sodium. Right now I'm using CFLs for space issues, and I don't want to get an HID lamp because of heat and noise. I only have one 40 watt CFL here, and I hope to add at least 2 more. Two more should be enough light to make my amaryllis to bloom again.

Notice the totally shady aluminum foil reflector. If you go to a bunch of trouble to get some good lights for your plants, you don't want half (or more) of that light just hitting the ceiling. You don't need anything fancy. White posterboard, white-painted walls, and aluminum foil are all very efficient reflectors.