For the indoor growers here - Can anyone recommend a good plant light? I have an office in downtown San Francisco that gets great morning light but is rather dark by 2 p.m.
Do I need a special type of grow light for my hoyas or would the bulb in a reading lamp pointed in their direction do the trick? Excuse my ignorance in advance....I just want to blast them with light to speed up the growing/flowering process, if possible.
Julia
Question about artificial lighting
Julia, I have a light cart that I purchased at a yard sale, it has 4 flourescent grow lights. You can purchase a grow light for your lamp at a Home Depot or Lowes. I am not sure if just a regular light bulb would do anything or not, maybe someone else woud no the answer to that.
I use one cool and one warm light for growing indoors, it's cheaper than buying plant lights!
Blessings,
Awanda
fluorescents give off less heat than incandescent, so you probably want to go that route. Also consider getting a compact fluorescent bulb to get a bit more light out of it. As you have natural light in the morning, I don't think you need to worry too much about the kelvin rating (cool warm etc).
Hi Awanda - What do you mean by one cool and one warm light? Like a regular and a heat lamp instead of a grow lamp?
Thanks for all the responses!
Julia
this page has a graphic explaining warm and cool. http://www.homeharvest.com/whichgrowlightisrightforme.htm
I'm not recommending the vendor - only mentioning the explanation they have.
Warm/cool depends on the Kelvin rating of the tube. If you had no natural light, it would be very important to make sure you got both ranges of light.
Thank you so much for the link - it's been years since
Science class. I'll read it in detail when I have a moment's peace.
Julia
Hi Julie;
Since I've grown almost all of my small growing hoyas under flourescent light since 1975, I feel well qualified to answer your questions on growing under lights. Like Awanda, I use one warm white and one cool white bulb in the 4 foot length. I don't know what that means in kelvins or whatever,...I don't need to know, It works wonderful. I also use regular shop light fixtures (the apparatus that holds the bulbs) because they are half the price of fancy fixtures that are being sold to grow plants. Flourescent bulbs that are labeled as grow lights are very expensive and are in actuality nothing more than fancy labeled flourescent bulbs. The plants can't tell the difference. Using one warm white and one cool white is the equivalent of a grow light. I grow my small growing hoyas in 4 or 5 inch hanging baskets that hang from a chicken wire frame that my husband built, and keeps the tops of my plants at least 12 inches away from touching the bulbs. If the plants are gettin some supplemental light from the sun, 10 to 12 hours a day should be long enough for the lights to be on but if they are in a dark corner where little or very little light gets to them, you will need to have your lights on for 16 hours per day. I find that they will grow and bloom just as easily under lights as in natural light. I'm talking about the small growing plants. The large growing things not only won't fit into a light shelf for very long and they are seldom happy unless they get quite a bit more light than any artificial source. They will grow, they just don't usually bloom.
Annie W.
I also grow under shoplights and alternate cool and warm. It works great.
But shoplights might not look too good in an office.... Many orchid growers supplement window light with a floor or desk lamp with a compact fluor bulb to give the plants that extra bit they need.
Annie,
Thanks for the expert advice! These are all small growing hoyas. I'm trying to picture your set-up. Is there anyway you could take a picture of it and post it? I think it's fun anyway to see how people grow their hoyas indoors. That is if you care to share....
Also, I got the hoya book, thanks so much. I only had time to leaf through it but am looking forward to spending the weekend on my back deck studying and learning from it.
Julia
I'll have to look for the compact flourescent bulbs for my office. Are these something you have to order online?
Thanks, Julia
Julia here is a picture of my grow light stand.
Blessings,
Awanda
CFLs are becoming quite common - for example, IKEA carries them too. They are used to replace incandescent bulbs and are basically a fluorescent tube coiled up.
If you have space for a shoplight setup at home, I highly recommend it! It's great for cuttings, seedlings and perfectly grown African violets as well ;)
Wow, Awanda, that is quite some set-up. I don't have room for that (nor would DH allow it in our reduced spaced) but maybe when we move to the SF suburbs.
Keyring - how funny! I actually have one those bulbs in my office reading light now - they happened to be on sale at Walgreens. This one, right? So I can just train that on my hoya babies?
yup. It will be more helpful than an incandescent, and won't be as blinding or hot as a real grow light. Since you have some natural light, it might be enough to give a little boost....