Bare Minimum Light To OW Dormant Plants?

stickman · Oct 28, 2013

This is my first attempt to OW some 1st-year Chinense plants. I have them pruned and potted up as per Guru's recommendations, but my budget is a small one, and I wonder just how little light I can give my 4 OW plants to just keep them alive until I "advance the throttle" in February.

ATM I have 2 droplights with reflectors that each have 23 watt 5000k CFL bulbs lighting a roughly 8 sq. ft. area. They're both on a timer set for 8 hours on and 16 hours off. Should I keep the light levels at this setting, or can I go even lower?

I should mention that the plants are in my cellar, where there is no ambient light... just what I provide artificially.

Thanks for your input!

Jeff H · Oct 28, 2013

For a low budget, is there any chance you could bring them upstairs and put them in front of a south facing window? I have 5 right now that are on a small table in front of a west facing window so they only catch afternoon sun and they are plenty happy.

My basement plants are on 12/12 right now, but I am thinking of turning it down to 8/16. They don't need that much light with almost no leaves- to be honest, I think a couple of the ones in the basement didn't survive the shock of being cut back, but time will tell.

stickman · Oct 28, 2013

Sorry Jeff... no chance of bringing them upstairs. My wife has all the potted plants we can allow there already. We use solar gain to partially heat our house during the winter so we can't afford to block too much sunlight before it's properly entered the living space, and that space is fairly small to begin with (can't have the plants underfoot either). The good news is that the house is so tight and well-insulated, that it never gets below 50 degrees down there... even if there are no appliances generating heat. With the lights going, the waste heat pushes it up into the low to mid 50s, and if I enclose the plants in half inch styrene board that's faced on one side with reflective mylar I can get it up to the mid 60s inside the enclosure when the lights are on.

Sawyer · Oct 28, 2013

I OW most of mine in a room with south and west facing windows, so I don't have any direct experience OWing under lights alone. But it seems like I read about someone here on THP OWing by stacking their trimmed plants in a dark closet. My question would be, do plants need any light at all if they are properly trimmed and dormant? And how long can they remain dormant like that before they start dying? Maybe I'll try a few like this in my root cellar as a test this winter.

poypoyking · Oct 28, 2013

I would think that would be enough light. Mine are just under a 4ft shop light and seem to be doing fine. I also don't have access to any natural light and have mine in the basement. Now this is also my first year OW'ing so I am not sure how they will do the whole winter under lights but my seedlings seem to do just fine from January-June.

HillBilly Jeff · Nov 4, 2013

I have 11 plants in pots in my basement and the only light they get I provide. I have one 4 foot fixture with 2 T8 bulbs that I have on for 6-8 hours a day. My basement has heat, but I keep the registers off. So far temps have been running 60-65 degrees.

When winter comes, I heat with firewood and that means no heat in the basement still.

My plants all are putting out new leaves, but at a slower pace. My goal is to keep them alive only. I have never kept an eye on the temps down here before, but I can't imagine it getting much below 50, if it even does that.

I think if they survived 40s during plant out and 40s during the fall, they can winter it fine in the basement. As to when to start kicking them into high gear in the spring, I don't have an answer for that. I know I won't be bringing them up and down each day. Once they come out of the basement, they're upstairs to stay lol.

stickman · Nov 5, 2013

Bodeen said:
I have 11 plants in pots in my basement and the only light they get I provide. I have one 4 foot fixture with 2 T8 bulbs that I have on for 6-8 hours a day. My basement has heat, but I keep the registers off. So far temps have been running 60-65 degrees.

When winter comes, I heat with firewood and that means no heat in the basement still.

My plants all are putting out new leaves, but at a slower pace. My goal is to keep them alive only. I have never kept an eye on the temps down here before, but I can't imagine it getting much below 50, if it even does that.

I think if they survived 40s during plant out and 40s during the fall, they can winter it fine in the basement. As to when to start kicking them into high gear in the spring, I don't have an answer for that. I know I won't be bringing them up and down each day. Once they come out of the basement, they're upstairs to stay lol.

Thanks for the input BD... how many watts are you drawing with your t8s? The plants I have are doing pretty well with the two 23 watt CFLs and an 8 on-16 off schedule. They're all putting out new growth, but as you noted, they're growing slower. I turned off one of the CFLs for a few days, but decided to turn it back on again since I didn't want to take the chance that the new growth would get "leggy".

Jeff H · Nov 5, 2013

stickman said:
I turned off one of the CFLs for a few days, but decided to turn it back on again since I didn't want to have the new growth get "leggy".

IMHO, that is what pruners are for. Just cut them back if they get leggy.

Right now I settled on 10 on/14 off. I am using quite a bit more horsepower than you, but I still don't intend to let any of the plants get much bigger than can be supported by 1-2 gallon pots. Maybe 18" tall and 12" wide by April. All other growth gets trimmed. I suspect it will promote branching too which is a good thing.

HillBilly Jeff · Nov 5, 2013

No idea the wattage ATM.

ajijoe · Nov 5, 2013

100 watt daylight cfl's work great (2 in tandem per plant) you can spead it out a little more if you have alot of plants

thanks your friend Joe

SL3 · Nov 9, 2013

stickman said:
This is my first attempt to OW some 1st-year Chinense plants. I have them pruned and potted up as per Guru's recommendations, but my budget is a small one, and I wonder just how little light I can give my 4 OW plants to just keep them alive until I "advance the throttle" in February.

ATM I have 2 droplights with reflectors that each have 23 watt 5000k CFL bulbs lighting a roughly 8 sq. ft. area. They're both on a timer set for 8 hours on and 16 hours off. Should I keep the light levels at this setting, or can I go even lower?

I should mention that the plants are in my cellar, where there is no ambient light... just what I provide artificially.

Thanks for your input!

Great question as I was about to ask the same one. A lot of great answers above, but I am still waiting to see if anyone answers your specific question of can you use less than 8 hours of light per day with your particular set up to overwinter.

I will be throwing my plants in a cargo container with no windows once the frost hits this winter and am curious to hear the answer for minimum light myself, as I wish to keep the electric bill down as much as possible.

If no light is needed for trimmed plants as Sawyer has read, then this would be ideal, but would like someone who has done this to give us the facts before I experiment with what little I have left from this season.

Sawyer · Nov 9, 2013

I have way more plants than I have room for in a windowed room, so I'm going to try just sticking some in the root cellar. If they make it, great, if not, I/we learned something.

stickman · Nov 10, 2013

SL3 said:
Great question as I was about to ask the same one. A lot of great answers above, but I am still waiting to see if anyone answers your specific question of can you use less than 8 hours of light per day with your particular set up to overwinter.

I will be throwing my plants in a cargo container with no windows once the frost hits this winter and am curious to hear the answer for minimum light myself, as I wish to keep the electric bill down as much as possible.

If no light is needed for trimmed plants as Sawyer has read, then this would be ideal, but would like someone who has done this to give us the facts before I experiment with what little I have left from this season.

My thoughts exactly! After growing the plants out for a season, I don't want to risk killing them through ignorance.

Sawyer said:
I have way more plants than I have room for in a windowed room, so I'm going to try just sticking some in the root cellar. If they make it, great, if not, I/we learned something.

Thanks for doing this Buzz! It's nice you have enough extra plants left over from this season to be able to experiment, and I'm sure the answers will be helpful to a lot of folks. Good on ya!

Sarg3 · Nov 10, 2013

mine sit in a corner with two windows. No extra lighting and they're green again. I will probably give them another haircut soon.

stickman · Nov 10, 2013

Browning said:
mine sit in a corner with two windows. No extra lighting and they're green again. I will probably give them another haircut soon.

Cool! Do you have any pics or idea how much light comes in through the windows?

Sarg3 · Nov 10, 2013

stickman said:
Cool! Do you have any pics or idea how much light comes in through the windows?

It gets the sun mostly from sunrise until around 1pm. Right now it is a little after 2pm and while it's getting some light, it's not as much. The one window is south facing. I was skeptical at first but some members here mentioned it would be fine for OW and it's poroving they are right. I won't be getting a harvest like this but I just wanted them to still be alive come Spring and I am now certain they will be. It's a spare bedroom that I decided I'd give a go at.

These were all trimmed back when I puit them in here about a month ago. I removed all leaf growth. As you can see they're definitely still growing fine.

few of them were added more recently

Sawyer · Nov 10, 2013

My regular OW is in a SW room with a big south-facing picture window and two smaller west-facing windows, which have thin, white venetian blinds on them. Three years running and it does provide enough light to keep the plants alive. This past year I added a stand in the picture window for potting up seedlings to 3.5" square pots. I have a few CFLs on that, so the OWs benefit from that somewhat.

poypoyking · Nov 11, 2013

This is one of my overwinters under a standard 4 foot shop light. The bulbs aren't "grow" lights but they aren't the standard flourescent (can't remember which I bought). I actually trimmed off all but a few of the leaves, and only one is still on there. The rest is new growth under the lights.

stickman · Nov 11, 2013

How many FL tubes in your shop light Ben? You may not remember the color temperature, but the tubes should have the wattage printed on them.

I guess i should show what I'm holding... My two drop lights... They're just clipped onto the wire shelving behind them.

The plants when I first put them down cellar 3 weeks ago...

And now...

poypoyking · Nov 11, 2013

Just the two tubes. I will look at the wattage tonight. I saw some of those pics in your glog after I posted, things are looking great.

Actually I just looked online as I remember that whenI went to buy additional fixtures this year I couldn't get the cheaper T12's, I had to get newer T8 fixtures. So I have two T-12 40 watt bulbs in the fixture, I am just not sure what temperature the bulbs are.