this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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Houseplants

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32
Light sources for winter (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hi folks. I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for indoor light sources. I live in Colorado and we’re going to start getting snow here before much longer so I’ll have to haul my plants in. I was thinking about using a flexible LED strip for lighting over the winter. I just moved into this apartment a couple months ago and exactly one room gets sunlight on one wall from a west facing window so some supplemental light might be needed for my growing succulent collection.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just as a heads up to everyone, so not OP obviously; Never buy lamps that are marketed as grow lights; that is just a scam to sell you way overpriced lighting. You also generally don't need to buy these purple lights, because white lamps include these colors already, so unless you go for very specific effects, just buy a full spectrum light. I usually just do a search for suitable light temperature etc for my plants, probably around 4000 K or so, and then buy a led light. Don't buy lamps that can become hot, so as not to burn the plants.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As long as you give your plants enough light they (usually) don’t care about what type. Some do need the higher part of the spectrum to flower, but plant based chlorophyll can transform wavelengths from 400-700nm (PAR spectrum) In general led gives you about 3 micromol per watt while HPS gives 2.15

So a 600w hps gives you about the same mol as a 420w led lamp. This is not important for maintaining a plant over winter but if you are growing lettuce it’s crucial

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting. Is that why I see hydroponic setups using those magenta lights for lettuce?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As the plants look green they reflect green light. So when being efficient you’re better off not producing that, and as some plants like the upper parts of the spectrum red is good. Also blue is good as it’s high energy and not green. For lettuce they wants lot of photons. This is measured in MOL - https://hortamericas.com/blog/news/monitoring-is-crucial-for-growing-lettuce-and-leafy-greens-year-round/

So you do not really care about watt, but photons. This is why HPS was the shit up until led arrived. You needed many photons and HPS had more photons per watt than “normal” household lamps.