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Dear friends,
Those of you who mostly have to grow under
artificial lights may be missing the realities of real day length. When our sun
starts to 'come up' it is way over on the south eastern horizen and does not
intensify for quite a while so the plants cannot get the full effect of
photosynthesis early in the day. The sun does not come on as when you click a
light switch. Your plant lights do. Then at sunset the light drops
gradually, sometimes hastened by clouds and rain squalls preventing light from
reaching plant leaves. Commercial greenhouses align their growing areas to take
full advantage of day length but some of us have to make do with our small city
lots.
In winter, as of now, the sun is coming almost from
the horizen of the south at a sharp angle. This is when C. trianae blooms in
Miami, usually Dec. C. skinneri and aurantiaca come later in late
Feb. or March again depending somewhat on clouds, rain etc changing the light as
well as the slightly lengthening day and the sun starting to raise a little over
that southern horizen. All this happens very gradually then BOOM
suddenly the sun is directly overhead and it is summer! And we have days that
last until 8PM. All those summer blooming Catts. suddenly throw blooms
from their fresh green sheaths, while the skinneris will develop dried brown
sheath from their new growths and wait until the next spring.
It kind of works like clockwork but with slight
variations each year. The plants are reacting to very slight changes in their
environment which include the angle of the sun, the intensity as well as the
hours per day of light and the temperature.
I do hope our drops to in the 40's this week don't
hurt my 'chids. Can't protect them, they are on their own.
It does seem that a lot of people have lights on
the Catts. for too long in number of hours but maybe not strong enough light
when it is on. There are complaints that Catts are hard to bloom and I believe
that slight changes would help them. Right now Bob figured out we get 10 hours
57 minutes of daylight counting sunrise to sunset, but the workable sun hours
are somewhat less and the sun in Miami is very intense even in winter during the
middle of the day.
Good blooming and a cosy warm winter to
all,
Mary Lou/Miami
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