"White Monkey" wrote in message
.. .
we just have to crank the gas heater up until we feel warm
enough. Then we turn it off late at night, go to bed in the freezing room,
and turn the heater on again in the morning. I'd bet the room doesn't get
below 40 (Fahrenheit, obviously) at night even when it's several degrees
below zero (Celsius, of course) outside, and it doesn't get above 70 or so
in here by day. So the fluctuation is there--it jsut fluctuates a bit far,
I
guess.

Wow, Katrina, your conditions do sound a bit extreme to me. Brrrr, I can't
imagine living in an apartment where it gets to be that cold -- I get cold
whenever the thermostat goes below 70 Fahrenheit or 21 Celsius (I guess I am
spoiled -- though come to think of it I probably got that spoilt in my adult
years, I suspect that the temperatures in the old house I grew up in in
Poland were not as cozy as here). Phals generally are said to like the same
temperatures as most humans do -- so if you are cold, it may be too cold for
them, unless one is as spoiled as me that is.

Have you gotten any of your Phals to rebloom in these conditions yet. If you
have gotten at least one of the Phals to start a new spike in your apartment
then all should be well enough, since if one Phal is happy enough to
rebloom, the others should be as well. If not, if you have had any Phal for
longer than a year and it has not rebloomed for you, think of ways to try
to improve your conditions, one bit at a time.

Phals are pretty resilient plants, and they can adapt to conditions that are
not ideal. Mine are in an apartment that has only northern windows and I
have added grow lamps to try to improve the light. But even with the lamps,
the leaves of mine are darker than they ideally should be. However, the
Phals have re-flowered for me (including two that surprised me by growing a
new spike a second time this year). So the conditions here are good enough.
I do however keep trying to improve the conditions: recently I bought a
humidifier -- though, last winter I did not use one, and the plants
rebloomed nonetheless, but now I have the goal to improve their conditions
so that hopefully they will bloom more often, or longer or with more than
one flower spike.

All the best,
Joanna