PBS Forum

Different coloured/wavelength light produces different effects in plants.

Pretty much all wavelengths can produce growth but light of green-yellow-orange produces most growth per watt. Blue light controls inter-nodal distance and rather little is needed to keep growth compact. Lighting levels only have to be very low for plants to show phto-period effects, such as coming into flower - if memory is correct, red light is most effective.

Not only insolation varies across the globe, although we are considering mostly latitude here, but so does spectral content.

The big players in horticultural lighting systems - most especially Philips - have published masses of information and data.

Quote from: Arnold on December 14, 2022, 07:38:06 AMThe key in my view was the  addition supplementary light I added couple of years ago.

I have added some low level extra LED lighting, actually only on for 7 hours, to add intensity. The main reason was to experiment with Massonia leaves - supposedly held prostrate in high light levels.
What have you added, over what sort of area? Reflectors/shades?
In reality, approaching natural maximum light levels would be almost impossible - cramming enough lamps in would be impossible. Ignoring the costs.........
 

Quote from: Diane Whitehead on December 14, 2022, 05:48:24 PMI've spent about 5 months in South Africa  (Jan, Mar, July, Aug, Sep) and didn't really notice that it was so bright.

That is because the human eye corrects for the light intensity - look at the natural variation in your locality and it will be "enormous" between the lowest and highest but you will still regard it as bright sunlight.

Quote from: Uli on December 17, 2022, 03:57:43 PMDepending on their native habitat they may well experience the typical morning frost in their home country.

Duncan, in Lachenalia, gives details of hardiness and a few species are routinely exposed to frost.

Agreed - H. a. - virtually unmistakable for anything else.

A nice clone too, although it may be common enough outside of the UK.

The common one(s) here have smaller inforescences and none of the distinct stencilling on the bracts.

Quote from: David Pilling on December 08, 2022, 05:56:01 PMIn an ominous development, I have had my greenhouse heating on for two nights and weeks more of cold weather are now forecast.

It is winter. Until the past few days it has been insanely warm Over the past two and the next few days the only thing unusual about the weather is that day temp's are not forecast to get above something like 3C over much of England. 
The forecast for around here - Leicester -is showing frosts of only 1-2C as far as the end of next week, not the 4-6C of the past two nights. Blackpool is looking 2-4C warmer than here.

The forecast is only really accurate up to something like 10 days out anyway. Beyond that they can predict broad trends only.

Quote from: Robin Hansen on November 30, 2022, 07:31:10 AMisn't prepayment mode the next step on the road to ruin, poverty and a police state, not allowing dissent?

Prepayment in the UK pretty well always means having a meter which accepts coins or some kind of prepayment card - in other words, you pay in advance of use.

It is totally normal in the UK for fuel bills to be averaged over 12 monthly payments, based on the previous year's use, so payments in summer are partially in advance of using fuel over-winter. I do not see how/why the vast majority of people would find that a problem or undesirable - generally you pay the same in each of the 12 months.

Quote from: David Pilling on November 28, 2022, 03:09:37 AMAs to people getting fed up... they've closed many physical banks.

Yes, mine closed a few months back - to be fair, I very seldom ued it, but it also took the only cashpoint with it in the small town shopping area (not that I use cash very often either).

There needs to be far more of these shop/post-office/building society/bank conglomerations - always a shop and PO but various financial institutions man a secure office on a rota.

I do not use a mobile - authentication goes to my landline.
I have yet to have a problem away from home, but it wil happen at some stage.

i must be one of very many thousands in the same position in the UK.

Quote from: Martin Bohnet on November 20, 2022, 07:07:45 AMI guess Kniphofia seeds are rather short lived

How much any generalisation applies, I have no idea, but I have had wild-collected Kniphofia seed, ex Silverhill, germinate after at least two years in a pot, outdoors. I can't remember the sp., but it was rare in habitat (now long gone here).

K. ritualis??

For the past two years, a subsidary of Jaques Amand in the UK has been selling bulbs, albeit at an eye-watering price.

Presumably raised outside of the UK/EU, as are so many of the tender bulbs and tubers that they offer.

There was at least one shop (now closed), that offered the opportunity to pay in bit-coin, in Ashby-de-la-Zouch - I believe that C19 saw it off, and I obviously have no idea how many bit-coins they accepted while trading.

A few species of amaryllid are produced on a commercial scale in either southern Africa or the far east and sold in Europe - they do come up on EPay and nursery websites specialising in plants, especially bulbs/corms/tubers, that are not run-of-the-mill, with mass appeal.
They are mostly slow or very slow-growing and/or very slow to offset, if they do so at all, so are never cheap, H. albiflos being the only exception as it is so common as a cast-iron houseplant and offsets reasonably freely - plants can be had via EPay for £2 or so.  Seeds are also ephemeral and generally put out a root PDQ - see Crinum for similar - also an amaryllid.

Rareplants UK offer various species from time to time, at eye-watering prices in the main.

It is interesting that you reliably flower H. sanguineus, is it is supposed to be an unreliable/erratic flowerer in cultivation (I do not grow it, but received wisdom from G Duncan in print).

There are a small number of different forms of H. albiflors - different leaf forms, more or less bristles on the leaves, and there are also a couple of variegated forms that command pretty horrible prices if you can find them.

For instance -

Haemanthus

I will freely admit to the "normal" male-determined cleptomania for narrowly defined plant "groups" ( and very much else in life) - Amarylids, Crinum in particular, Zingergraceae.......................

But as for what are verging on minute variations in Galanthus.......................

I adore snowdrops - the PERFECT harbinger of better times around the corner, but.............................

Maybe just as well, given the prices for many of the micro-variants.......

The Silverhill website has just been updated, in the last 2-3-4 days. It still runs dreadfully slowly, but at least the search options are useable, unlike the older website recently.

Anyway, if their new website operates similarly, out of stock items have a notification option, which emails you when the species is stocked again.

If you try Lifestyle (also in RSA), one option is to look at new additions.

As far as flower to seed goes, in the vast majority of plants that people here would consider, it can only ever be a very few months - the seed is usually ripened and dried by the following "dry season", which often/usually starts just weeks after flowering.

Numerous triggers have been suggested over the years - sudden temperature change (up or down), virus, insect or bacterial damage. Spontaneous changes within the plant with no actual trigger are possible - similar to an embryo splitting to produce identical twins.

A lot of stable mutations involve the reproductive parts of flowers - extra petals to make double flowers often means sterile flowers.

Quote from: Martin Bohnet on November 11, 2022, 11:20:09 PMI vote for an institutionalized version of it - and we should call it "The heated Greenhouse"

LLLOL
Vote 2 here.