A few facts about grow light

Today's work was to empty the container I filled with water yesterday. My plan was to save it for the flowers, but the 'bath tub' prooved irresistible for the younger generation and when I found the cans for flowerwater already filled I gave in and fetched a siphon.

To get you something to read I tracked down a good page about grow light on the net. Little Greenhouse sell greenhouses (surprise) and have put some facts on their website. It's a clear and consise overview.

Indoor Plant Grow Light Guide

If you want added light and can't afford the lamps described you can use ordinary cold-white fluorescent tubes as bright as possible. They work almost as well and are far cheaper. I use them myself.

New light! New soil?

My plants grows again. The difference with and without grow lights is remarcable. My seedlings litterarly stopped growing between sprouting and the moment I hung a new lamp over them. My amaranth has got new zest for life, the herbs are growing and the tomatoes are thriving to the point it's scary. The two exceptions are the leeks and the carrots, I may have to weed them out early to make place for better vegetables. Normally I'm quite sentimental over my plants but now I have so many fun things on my windowsills that this is easy to do.

One thing I need to do is to refresh my soil. I'm still using that cheap seedling soil that collapses into concrete as soon as it dries. I thought I hade thrown it away, but a finger test in my pots reveals that the soil is hardening. I have better stuff in my cupboards, I only need to sterilise it first and then I mix it into my 'general blend'. It'll be interesting to see if this will have as much ifluence on my plants as the new grow lights.

Progress at the end of March

I took a look at my purslane seedlings the other day and realised that quite a few of them had fallen. The bigger part of their lines looks like Uppsala students the last day of April*. Only a few plants close to the window seemed to be thriving.

Hmmm....

Was there anything wrong with the grow light? I didn't need any special machine to find out what was lacking. I put my hand under the armature. The lamp was shadowing the plants from the sunlight. We may be in the last days of March and the sunlight reaches amounts close to tropical, but I do expect more 'bite' from a grow light. I've myself to blame, currently I'm using the flourescent light that was enclosed with the armature, and that was not meant to be a grow light in the first place, plus it's rather old. My new quest is therefore to get out there and buy a bright full colour flourescent light.

In the last days of March I'm adding outdoor gardener to my identity. My balcony is starting to come alive. Every day I walk out and take a look at the different buds. You may recall that my mints and lavendar have died - sic transit gloria mundi. The strawberries have survided, though, and needs some weeding and general shape up. The leaves have brown brims, which is a bad sign, but I hope to find some way to make them thrive anyway. What makes me most happy is that my big ones seems to have survived. The buds of both my roses are swelling, and soon they will be leaves instead. The same is happening to the cherry tree that I'm giving a close study every day. Can I hope for home grown cherries this autumn?

*In Uppsala the last day of April is celebrated with "sillfrukost" (breakfast with pickled herring, small glases of strong liquor are more or less required to this), champagne gallop down Carolina Rediviva hill at noon and spring ball in the evening. Not all students are making it all through the day.

Grow light for beginners

Grow light is a good thing to have when you are gardening indoors. If you're not buying that, take a look at the photo series on my small sage and mint garden. Today it looks like this:



In the beginning it looked like this. The plants had survived a long swedish winter in one of our darker windows.



After a few days with grow lights, it looked like this.



And now I have mint enough to drink tea made from fresh leaves several times a week, and have problems finding purposes for my amounts of sage. Clearly an indoor gardener, at least an indoor gardener with the ambition of growing eatable things, cannot do without extra light. But why?

The reason is that the plant need three things to survive; light+water+soil (ie. nutriants from...). It needs light of the right amount and quality in the same way it needs nutriants of right amount and quality.

During the summer in Sweden (we are roughly at the same longitude as Canada) most plants are doing pretty well since we have almost the same amount of lights as in the tropics. In the winter, however, we have only a third or in worst case a twohundredth part. Our human eye cannot register those big differences, but the plants do - and starves.

If you are gardening indoors you need to think both of the right amount of light for the season, and the right quality of light. Roughly light is divided into red and blue, where red gives long plants and blue compact and leafy ones. Gardeners deep into this field has long ago lost themselves into the world of lux, lumen and LED. I might join them in the future, but today we're looking at the basics.

The easisest way to get good light is to visit the apropriate chain in gardening or hardware or do it your self. I bought mine at a swedish hardware/do it yourself chain. When you find flourescent lights neetly labled "grow light", buy it. If you want to grow in big pots, buy a long 'normal' flourescent light and the appropriate armature.

Now, grow light tend to be expensive, so it may come as a relief that if you are keeping your plants in your windowsills you can make do with complementing the sunlight. In that case you can buy normal full colour flourescent light.

The last part was interesting for me. My instant herbgarden and sow box are endowed with a futuristic bluewhite light. Eventhough it's been up for several days I haven't noticed any difference like I did with the sage and mint. I guess the light is of inferiour quality, which means I have to change. Full colour light will dig a hole in my budget, but a far smaller one than 'real' grow light. I'll update on this subject.