Greetings, I have decided to try my hand at indoor gardening. I have had planted tanks for years now and do very well with them, but IMO they seem easier, everything is contained in smaller spaces (45, 65, 110, 2x55 gallon tanks). I have kept potted plants with limited success over my life and desired to spruce up my dining room area a little. It has a North-west facing patio door and gets some direct sunlight during the day, but mostly it is indirect. I put up lattice work on one wall (8ftx8ft) and have some plants on it now. It is probably the wrong time of the year to start this project but with how I tend to work It will probably be done by spring ;) I attached a pic for a visual idea of what I am attempting. ATM I have 8x40W t12 lighting the room (they look to be 8,000K range), they are too far away right now (12ft) but I plan on moving them a lot closer in the next few days. But before I build the fixture to house them I had a few questions on proper lighting. I am familiar with aquarium lighting appropriate for plants but this is all foreign to me. On my show tanks I will use Power compact and metal halide bulbs in the 6,500-10,000K range with 89+ CRI. Most of the information I can find seem to be how may lumens lowlight/medlight/highlight plants like. But I have no way to measure that. Is there a simple rule (aquariums have the watts/gallon system) that can be followed to artificially light indoor plants? What tends to be a good photoperiod to run the lights for? Will NO fluorescents be adequate, or should I be looking in the realm of MH/PC/etc. Most of the plants I would keep are and will probably remain low-med light. Any thoughts would be appreciated. TY
I use artificial light for my propagation set up where the lighting is based on a 1:1 mix of specialised 4 foot long fluorescent grow light with a 40 watt 4 foot cool white tube. But then, the set up allows me to put the light as close to the seedling/cutting/bulb as possible. I have never attempted the set up that you illustrated in in your picture (looks really nice, by the way! Well done!). But as you are aware, the distance of the plant from the light source is also an important determinant of the actual luminance at the level of the leaves. This probably does not matter with your tank arrangements as the distances involved are small and controlled. But in a set up that you are thinking of, the light level received by the plants could be significantly affected by how far the light fixture is - the Inverse Square Law. This basically states that if the intensity of the light source is fixed, the luminance measured as light energy falling on a unit square area of surface is reduced by the square of the distance from the light source. In other words, Plant 'A' positioned two feet farther from the light source than Plant 'B' will only be getting light at a luminance of 25% of what Plant 'B' is getting. It's not easy to get familiar with the mechanics of the measurement of light energy. Are we measuring total light energy emitted from the light source (flux)? That from a defined solid angle (angular intensity)? At the surface receiving the light (irradiance or luminance)? All these have different meanings and necessitate different units and methods of measurement. For example the "lumens" generally measures the light energy emmitted by a bulb or other light source. "Luminance" and "Irrradiance" measure the light energy received by a specified area of a surface. To confuse us all, manufacturers imply brightness by designating the amount of energy needed to run that bulb - the wattage. In truth, this does not have any consistent relationship to the amount of actual light energy emitted by the bulb. Case in point - a 20 watt compact fluorescent fixture emits about the same total light energy as a 100 watt incandescent bulb. There are good and easily understandable information out there, though, and this article from the Missouri Columbia University Extension service is a starter. If you are interested in understanding the measurement of light, this Powerpoint presentation probably provides one of the most lucid explanation. Even then, it takes a bit of work to understand it.
I hate to spend money on gadgets, but a little light meter that I picked up (half price fall clearance at least) has been really useful on occasion. The brand name is "Garden Cottage" on this thing, and it can be switched from fluorescent to sunlight/HID, measuring in footcandles. A little booklet with it is actually helpful, with much info on the amount of light needed by various plants, and other tidbits as well. Just trying it out now, I see that the light from a double fluorescent fixture here is almost useless to plants unless you are closer than a foot. Things like that are so deceptive to me, as I have no idea walking into an artificially lit room how bright it really is...the meter tells me my eyes are adjusting to the light fixture which is actually not that bright, thereby "fooling" me into thinking my plants could be way over there and still get useful lighting... The meter is useful for adjusting shading on propagation and other areas as well...again it's just about impossible to guess these things looking at them with our eyes!
Thanks for all the info. Looks like I will have to find some better way to supplement lighting during winter months to get this growing how I would like it to.
indoor gardening using artifical light is a great idea, the closer the lights the better, t12 bulbs can be laid on your plants, or kept within inches in some cases, fluoro bulbs come in various sizes, t5s are the recommended bulb, for non point lighting, although you can save quite a bit of money using t8s or t12s many people swear all fluoro lights are worthless for growing, Metal Halide are recommended for vegetative growth, and High Pressure Sodium for fruiting, and flowering cycles. common lighting patterns include 24/0 20/4 18/6 16/8 12/12 and 10/14 light/dark other photoperiods can be used, and i would recommending finding what fits your needs. the recommended intensity is between 25-50w per sqft good luck and happy gardening
