Growing Plants under Lights
No yard no sunlit windows? You can still grow plants with a little help. The primary thing that needs to be provided is a replacement for the sun or in some cases a supplement to the exterior light you do get.
No matter where plants are grown they need light and nutriments to grow.
To replace the light from the sun you can use an artificial lighting source to supplement or replace that provided from the sun that allows photosynthesis to occur.
These days as with much of the lighting in our homes the method for creating supplemental lighting for plants has changed from being generated by incandescent light bulbs to fluorescent bulbs to LED lighting that now produces light at a lower cost and with a spectrum more light that of natural light.
These days as with much of the lighting in our homes the method for creating supplemental lighting for plants has changed from being generated by incandescent light bulbs to fluorescent bulbs to LED lighting that now produces light at a lower cost and with a spectrum more light that of natural light.
Each of these type of artificial light sources will produce light in a slightly different range of the range produced by the sun.
Light generated from any source covers what is called a spectrum of light covering various different colors that we see.
Plants at different stages of their life need different parts of this light spectrum in addition to the intensity (Micromoles) to allow their proper growth and development.
Blue light, for example, helps encourage vegetative leaf growth
Red light, when combined with blue, allows plants to flower.
For vegetative or green growth typically at the beginning of the plants life the plant is looking for more light from the blue part of the light spectrum.
A lack of light intensity or light in the blue spectrum will result in plants that stretch for the light and are weak and spindly.
Elongated
Normal
For the flowing cycle in plants they are primarily looking for light in the red spectrum of light that helps support the formation of flowers.
Since plants at some point will be both growing and blooming you will want a balance of both to simulate what they would get from the sun. But since the light is from an artificial source we now are able to change the amount of each type of light from the spectrum to help best support the type of plant growth we dealing with.
For starting seedlings where we want them to be compact and sturdy in their growth we would like to have more of the spectrum from the blue side of the light spectrum.
To get your orchids, violets or other flowers to bloom you would want to have more of the light spectrum from the red side of the light spectrum.
This is where the LED light really come into their own. By having different LED bulb types mounted into the light fixture you can change the type of spectrum just by flipping a switch on some of the LED fixtures. Even with out this type of option they will produce the full range of light colors needed by the plants you are looking to grow indoors.
For more information on the various types of lights you can use and the type of light spectrum they produce as well as the light intensity they produce Click Here