Hi! and plant stand question...

Hi! I'm new to Dave's Garden and the forum, and wanted to say hi. I had just 4 african violets when I started here a few weeks ago, but after browsing things like the AVSA photo gallery, and reading the forum and enjoying photos of everyone's gorgeous plants, I saw the message about one of the sales at Bloomin' Jungle, and after a moment of weakness I'm now the proud owner of 25 baby violets. :-)

Right now the plants are living on the dining room table, but I'd like that to be temporary. I'm trying to build a plant stand, with shelves with lights above them, and trays for wicking. (I have this theory that 29 plants with wick watering and artificial lighting will be *easier* to take care of than 4 plants in the way on the kitchen counter that I tend to forget to water. I'm not sure it's exactly true, but now that I have 29 plants I figure I should try to do whatever to make things easier.)

The trouble is, that the dimensions of the stand just aren't working out, and so I wanted to ask some questions. The main one being, if you have lights above your plants, how far above the top of your plants have you hung the lights? And how many bulbs / what wattage in the light fixture?

I have a 74" tall metal shelving set that I'd like to have 5 shelves on (the top one just to hang lights from and storage above, and then 4 shelves with plants on them). This seemed reasonable when I bought it. Hah. :-)

It turns out that the poles the shelf attach to only have 71" of space where shelves can go. And then each shelf is 1.25" tall just for itself (there's a lip around the bottom of the shelf that the light fixture doesn't fit into). The light fixtures are 3.25" tall. The trays I plan to use for the wicking reservoirs are 3.25" tall. The eggcrate lattice (to go on top of the trays) is .25" tall. And my grown-up violets seem to be about 4.5" tall.

This means that each shelf with plants has 7.5" taken up not even counting the plants, and then 12" counting the plants. Which means that if I put 4 shelves of plants in that 71" tall shelf, there will be 5.75" between the tops of the plants and the lights. Which seems awfully close... Both with what web sites seem to say (not that they agree, of course, LOL), and just eyeballing it. Even if I make one or two shelves shorter on the theory they'll be holding minis (so cute!), it seems iffy.

My next thought is to disassemble the darn thing that I just assembled, and reassemble it this time to deliberately put the shelves in upside down so that the lip is on top and the lights can go flush with the bottom of the shelf. This would gain me 1.25" per shelf (so 7" between the tops of the plants and the light), if I can get the trays to fit inside of the lip. But I think that's still not enough.

Any thoughts?

Thanks, and hi everyone!

Sara

As a reward for reading all the way through, here's a photo of all 25 babies together!:

welcome! always fun to see a new face.

29 (or 200) plants on a wicking system under lights on a timer is easier than 4 AVs on manual watering and light from one side :-) Really, I believe it.

When I used to grow more violets, I found they liked to be about 8-11" from 4 tubes of T12 fluorescent lights. If using T8s, they wanted to be a bit further away. By 8-11", I mean that the top of the plants are this distance from the tubes.

I actually have some shelves that are spaced tighter than I want - they are 7" from the shelf to the T8 lights. I don't have a wicking setup so the pots sit directly on the shelf. I can tell you that I have so many plants suffering from too much light that I'm considering dismantling the whole thing (which means dismantling two shelves because they are stuck together) and taking out a shelf. It's easier to raise a pot to get the plant closer to the light, than to make the pot sink into the shelf below to increase the distance.

That said, some violets like more light than others. Temperature will also affect how much light is needed to bloom (less light at cooler temps).

Oh, I just looked at a photo of the shelves at Rob's Violets, and I guess that there is about 9" between the top of the plants and the light. Their fluor tubes are spaced further apart, with maybe 6" between the two shoplights. Mine are jammed together. In other words, their setup has less light for each plant than mine.

I know we have others on some serious light stand setups....

Looking at Rob's Violets setup again, it seems their top shelf is maybe an inch shorter, and the bottom shelf is 2-3 taller.

Welcome Sara! Nice plants.
We love new folks!
Shelves are tricky & lighting can be the same. I think everyone set's up a little different but they all seem to work. It seems to me to be more of a total combination of various things like length of time, fertilizer, type of bulbs & distance, than any particular one.
I have used lots of different set ups & all seem to work ok so I wouldn't fret too much over it.
Right now I'm using 2 ~20wt T-bulbs instead of 40's because I needed the extra shelf space.It lowered the light level but the shelves are a little closer together so I think it all comes out in the wash.
So far they are doing ok, but it takes some time to see the effects of changes you make.
There are lots of pics of most everyones set up & some grow in windows too.
I tend to grow them anywhere I can set them...lol


I would love to see a pic of the shelf you are trying to use.

MsC

Welcome Sara

You will be getting so much advise. You will need to filter through it and watch your plants. They will tell you how to adjust.

I have two units. My plants are 12 to 14 inches from the top of the plant to the light. The lights are Gro Lux wide spectrum 40 W 4 feet long and there are two lights per shelf.

Being too far away from the light is better than too close. At least at first. If you set your shelves too close you really damage your plants. If they are too high you can make adjustments one way or another.

Good luck. Keep us up to date.

so I just had a bright idea for reducing the light on a couple of my shelves. I could throw some shade cloth between the plants and the lights. (now how ridiculous is that)

Are you growing other plants? You might find it useful to have shelves spaced differently. (My mini succulents love being real close to the lights....)

WelCome Sarah ! You've come to the right place. Your babies are soo cute and pretty !
Hubby bought my stands at Lowes or HD and the 4 ft. double light fixtures.
I won't add advice as you got a lot of good info !
In our stickies above first thread into the forum I think there are pictures of stands and information also !
Good luck and nice to meet you !
Allison

My Mini's babies, leaf pots are very close to lights.
Girl leaf plants, light foliage, variegated, light color blooms like pink, white... grow better at the end of the light tubes as they don't need as much light. Also plants that flower yellow need less light. I also fount my Russian plants need less light. Your plants will let you know !

I discovered the Russians plants need less light, too. Good to know, Allison.

Thanks for the advice everyone! I forgot to say that the lights are two 32W T-12's only a few inches apart, with a reflector behind. I do have other houseplants, but mostly they're at work, and none are really shorter than the african violets, so if I make the fourth shelf much shorter to give the others room, I probably won't be able to use it for anything but storing supplies.

In fact, to get enough space for the other shelves, I think I'd need to take out a shelf (and its light entirely), which seems sad, but may be what I have to do.

But the idea of trying things carefully and seeing how the violets do is appealing. Since the violets are babies they're in shorter pots than bigger plants. And I don't have the wicking stuff set up yet, so they'll be lower down still because of that. With both of those, they'll be 10" from the lights, which seems about right.

Thanks,

Sara

Here's a photo of part of the shelves, with one of the lighting
fixtures attached using plastic tie wraps (the lights came with a
chain, but I couldn't adjust it as well as I wanted to):

Very nice ! Small , babies miniatures, leaf pots can be even closer but try this see how it works for you !

I got all the little plants moved onto the shelves. Here's a photo of them all, plus a few of my old plants and some leaves I'm trying to start bagged and on the lower shelf. I set the timer for not so many hours tomorrow, to prevent them from being shocked by the change in light levels. Hopefully they do well.

I tried to put the variegated leaf ones away from the center in general, and the darker leaf ones towards the middle. I don't have any girl leaf ones that I know of. I gave up on trying to sort by flower color at this point since it just gave me too much to keep track of. I'll see how they do and try to move them around to keep them happy.

Thanks again to everyone for advice. Hopefully in a couple of months I'll have them all on wicks, they'll have grown a ton, and I'll be offering to trade leaves and such. :-)

Here's a photo of Ma's Pink Flamingo, which started blooming the day after it arrived. :-)

Sara

They look great but they are to far from lights. Me the small ones, minis, semi's are 6 inches some even closer to lights and they do fine. I have some really large ones and with the light fixture as high as they can go they are close to plants and all happy.

Sara, welcome to the AV forum! You did just dive right in -- I love all your new little plantlets!!!

Different things work for different folks! :-) I'll have to measure and see how they really ended up now that I have bigger AVs on the shelves also, but when I set up my stand I tried to allow at least 7 or 8 inches between the larger AVs and the lights and the tops of the plants... As I added trays, as plants grew, etc, I've now got 5 to 7 inches above the tops of the plants. Minis and leaf pots don't seem to mind being even closer, within 3 to 4 inches of the lights. Occasionally, a plant will start getting a little tight at the center, and I'll move it out toward the edge of the shelf, but I haven't had any trouble with burning or anything on the leaves.

My AV stand is in front of a south facing window, with a light blind drawn so the plants don't fry. The bottom shelf, which gets little natural light, is big enough to hold four 1020 flats and has four 32 watt T-8 florescent bulbs. The other shelves, which also get light from the window, have 2 bulbs over them. I think that's about the same setup as you're using, Sara.

Since they were getting so much more light this summer, and since I wanted to reduce the heat generated by the lights, I unscrewed half the bulbs last month, and my plants seem pretty happy.

You've got a good idea about increasing the light gradually. Once they've adapted to your current setup, it shouldn't be any problem to put them up a little higher with whatever wicking or capillary mat system you decide to go with. From playing with my plants since I got the new shelf & lights last winter, I think anything from 5 to 10 inches of clearance between the lights and the top of the plants seems to work fine. As Keyring said, it's easier to put a little something under a plant that is reaching up for more light than it is to try to lower a shelf for a plant that's getting too much light. I also spaced my shelves differently so I could move plants around that seemed to have different requirements.

Keep us posted as these babies grow! We want to see all those fabulous "first blooms!"

Great pic. Your stand is very similar to mine.They should do great there!

Thanks for adding the pic.


MsC

Same here... my upstairs AV stand that I got at the end of '05 is very similar.... there was a thread from when I was setting it up, but here's a photo:

I found the thread! I'll put a link since there's information about the spacing I used etc... http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/565416/

Critter my stands are like yours, but the first one I bought did not have the neat plastic shelf liners like yours did. The second one does & I like it.

I did have to remove a shelf from each of my stands to get the spacing I wanted...did you???


MsC

Hi Sara,

Welcome!!! You look like you are on the right path and you will find lots of great advice! I have learned tons since joining the forum!

Good peeps here!!!

Joanne

I used all the shelves that came with my stand, but only 5 of the shelves have plants on them... the 6th shelf is at the very top of the stand, so it only gets used for a little storage and as a place to hang the light fixture for the 5th shelf!