• Tweet
• 

• Tweet
• 

Success with house plants is largely dependent on proper window placement. And what indoor plant enthusiast has ever had enough sunny windows?

Fluorescent Grow Lights To The Rescue

Nowadays you need not let this lack of sunlight curtail your efforts to grow plants indoors. Electricity and fluorescent grow lights has come to the rescue and you can make every day a “sunny” day.

Fluorescent lights used as grow lights can be suspended at proper distances above your houseplants to make them grow beautifully in basements, on windowless walls or in dark corners. In many instances, grow light – grown houseplants are superior to those grown in bright windows.

Indoor Grow Light Setup

For a simple grow light setup you need two 48-inch 40-watt daylight or white tubes and their starters (ballast). Some type of a reflector, either purchased or homemade, is also needed to concentrate the light on the plants.

The tubes minus a reflector cost approximately $30. You can make a reflector from a piece of plywood. Paint it white and mount the tubes on it.

The grow light fixtures may be suspended by a chain or pulley over the plants, or they may be mounted in a cabinet or under a shelf, with the plants under them.

If you are designing a stationary unit, place the lights so there will be about 18 inches between the tubes and the bottom of the pots.

This allows room for an occasional gift plant or the rejuvenation of an ivy or philodendron. Many “basement growers” fasten pulleys to the plant shelves or to the lights and reflectors in order to raise and lower them according to the plants needs.

Replacing Grow Light Bulbs

Grow light bulbs and tubes of which they a many last 12 to 16 months and replacements cost about 5 dollars per tube. However, after six months the light intensity of a tube decreases considerably.

The cost of running fluorescents is approximately is pennies per hour for two 40-watters. The best results as to flowering come when the lights are left on 12 to 16 hours daily.

African Violets Easy To Grow Under Lights

African violets are some of the most popular for “under-the-light” culture. Experience shows that they need from 300 to 600 foot-candles of light, depending on size and stage of growth, for good growth and flowering.

Small plants in two-inch pots can be placed two to four inches from the lights; plants in 3 to 4 inch pots about 11 inches away. Always measure from the tube to the pot rim.

This should give you a clue as to the amount of light African violets are receiving. If foliage turns yellow, they are receiving too much light. Accordingly, move them farther from the lights.

If leaves are deepest green, stems long and weak and bloom scarce, they are not getting enough light. The remedy for this is to bring them closer to the lights. Most gardeners use inverted flower pots for this purpose.

Other Gesneriads

Gloxinias and most other gesneriads (with the exception of episcias) need more light than African violets. Place the small ones two to four inches from the lights; plants in 5 to 6 inch pots about eight inches from the tubes. When their buds expand move them from the lights to a window and give the space to needy plants.

Foliage Vines

Most foliage vines can be grown in relatively low-light intensities. Since the area in the center of the tubes sheds strongest light, place light-loving things there and the greenery toward the end zones.

Setting pots atop moist sand or pebble-filled trays heightens humidity. Take care, though, to keep the water in the pebbles below pot level.

Ventilation Important

Ventilation, too, is all-important. While plants do not like blasts of cold, they do resent stagnant air. Basement growers find that fans alleviate this condition. “Upstairs” plants usually receive enough fresh air from the opening and closing of household doors.

If you grow your plants in cases, open the doors for a while each day to admit fresh air. Day temperatures of 70 to 75° F. and night readings at 60 to 65° F. are considered best for most house plants.

Water and Feeding Plants

Water and feed plants under lights exactly as you would window-grown plants. Use room-temperature water and moisten the soil thoroughly – I like to water with “sub-irrigation.” Let the topsoil dry out before giving them another soaking.

If you spill water on furry-leaved plants, you needn’t let it bother you, since the “artificial sun” will not burn the leaves.

Use an all-purpose liquid fertilizer and fertilize growing plants twice a month. Small seedlings should receive only one-fourth proportion of the usual dosages.

The Art of Growing Plants Under Lights

The art of growing plants under lights is not limited to common indoor plants. Many use fluorescent lights a great aid in producing better plants. For example, Harold Kane in Ontario, Canada, collects rare and unusual plants and uses fluorescent grow lights for growing seedlings, cuttings and flowering plants of gesneriads.

He has discovered that cuttings root well in low-light intensities and, therefore, can be placed toward end zones or wedged between large-foliaged plants.

Cindy Edwards in South Dakota, finds her lights excellent as starters for seedling pansies and for fostering flowering African violets, gloxinias and semperflorens begonias.

Benjamin Johnson, a member of the Minneapolis City Park Board, takes a busman’s holiday by continuing his gardening at home. In a lighted display case (made from an old console radio) he grows pothos, philodendron and African violets.

In a utility setup in the kitchen he handles seedling tomatoes, peppers, petunias and numerous garden annuals. These are started in March, potted and placed as close to the lights as possible, so that the leaves do not rest on the tubes. Before transferring them to the garden, Mr. Johnson places the potted plants in a sheltered nook to inure them to outdoor living.

John Robley in San Francisco, California, loves growing under artificial grow lights. He says, “During the winter we get heavy fogs and lose the sun in the very early afternoon. Before using fluorescents, my plants lacked flowers on winter-grown plants. Now the lights supplement the dreary hours and I enjoy a wealth of bloom”.