My Phal. corningiana had seven buds on four spikes and had just finished flowering. However, I made the mistake of changing the growing conditions drastically (see below) after the buds had developed so it got shocked I think and subsequently had a hard time opening its flowers. Here's a shot of one of the blooms. There's an imperfection on the lower sepals because I had sprayed Physan the day before to control some fungus issues on my Phal. mariae that was next to it. Will try to flower this plant again next year to see if the severe cupping is a characteristic of this individual, or if it was just my rookie mistake.
I recently 'upgraded' my grow lights to a six-tube 4' T5 HO fixture, and realized pretty fast that this was probably an overkill for my current conditions in the small space. However, it is still better than my small four-tube 2' T5 HO fixture, so it is here to stay. This new fixture can probably light up an entire growth room in terms of
Phalaenopsis light requirements. Using an estimate for light intensity by an iPhone app, I'm currently only running two tubes on this fixture for 1000-1500 foot candles. I had used four out of the six tubes for a month prior to this and most plants were getting a little stressed out because it was at about 2000-2500 foot candles. Here's a look at the current situation and it appears I might have a little more room to expand the collection!
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