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CFL Bulb Question

JJBagoose said:
Good info Rich, I have 2 questions below:

ballast? When you say guts, which part are your referring to?
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The cylinder part above the spiral that houses the guts of the light.

JJBagoose said:
Could you expand on this a little? Are you saying that the times you leave the light setup off you don't want any light introduced during this period?
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Indeed, because they are only getting 8 hours of darkness it's a good idea (for most plants) to make sure they dont get exposed to any strong light source for an extended period of time...

Small levels of light are nothing bad, Plants get moonlight and star light all the time so you can go in there with a flashlight and look around, thats not going to harm anything. But I dont leave any light on in or near that room when the lights are off.
 
RichardK said:
Indeed, because they are only getting 8 hours of darkness it's a good idea (for most plants) to make sure they dont get exposed to any strong light source for an extended period of time...

Small levels of light are nothing bad, Plants get moonlight and star light all the time so you can go in there with a flashlight and look around, thats not going to harm anything. But I dont leave any light on in or near that room when the lights are off.
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RichardK...is this your opinion or do you have documentation to verify your assertions about light and hot peppers...not trying to be argumentative, just wanting clarification...

Other crops grown indoors ARE photosensitive but that genus species is a bit different than peppers...
 
I think what he's saying is when the lights are off(no matter the # of hours) there shouldn't be other bright lights around and in theory he's right the plants might stretch for that light, but I leave a fairly bright light on in my greenhouse to see what I'm doing at night and have never seen negative results.
 
POTAWIE said:
I think what he's saying is when the lights are off(no matter the # of hours) there shouldn't be other bright lights around and in theory he's right the plants might stretch for that light, but I leave a fairly bright light on in my greenhouse to see what I'm doing at night and have never seen negative results.
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That AND it screws with their internal timing, I had regular bell peppers growing indoors go dormant and drop all their leaves because of irregular lighting patterns.

Some plants are tied into the seasons, and when light levels change they can fruit too early, or go dormant. I dont really need to reference anything for that, you can look it up yourself.

But here are some links I just dug up:
http://www.jyi.org/news/nb.php?id=1138
http://www.physorg.com/news103217473.html

And a snippet from allexperts.com
Plants NEED Darkness
Plants need dark periods. Periods of light (called photo-periods) and dark periods and their relative lengths have an effect on plant maturity. Recent studies have conclusively proven that it is not just the length of the day which affects growth, but the duration of the dark period which follows. The dark period of each day affects flowering and seeding of most plants. Although many plants can grow under continuous light, nearly all plants prefer a dark period each day for normal growth. All plants need some darkness to grow well or to trigger flowering. The ideal photoperiods of plants vary, some preferring long days and short nights; others the reverse; and some do best when the length of the night and day periods are equal.
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It's really not that hard to find this stuff, and I'm a bit suprised some of you dont know this :)
 
This thread has gotten way too technical for me but I'll just chime that I've had great luck using CFL for starting my plants. Got several in clamp lights on a cheap timer. The whole rig costs about 20 bucks.

The plants do fine until they are ready to be hardened off.
 
What I am finding is that the amount of useable light delivered to the plants in what counts. I have about 90 tomato, 10 cucumber, 10 eggplant and 20 pepper seedlings growing in my box. They are getting at least 7700 lux of light. The plants all start out a little leggy (especially the cucumbers that were four inches tall two days after poking their head through the soil), but since then only one pepper plant is showing any signs of growing taller quicker rather than wider at the same rate. My lights are, for the most part, about six inches from the tops of most of the plants, which means they are getting more than 7,700 lux of useful light.

I've seen arguments about which lights to use are best for foliage, flowering, fruiting, but the sun puts out all the spectrums and the plants know how to use it.

Mike
 
wordwiz said:
What I am finding is that the amount of useable light delivered to the plants in what counts. I have about 90 tomato, 10 cucumber, 10 eggplant and 20 pepper seedlings growing in my box. They are getting at least 7700 lux of light. The plants all start out a little leggy (especially the cucumbers that were four inches tall two days after poking their head through the soil), but since then only one pepper plant is showing any signs of growing taller quicker rather than wider at the same rate. My lights are, for the most part, about six inches from the tops of most of the plants, which means they are getting more than 7,700 lux of useful light.

I've seen arguments about which lights to use are best for foliage, flowering, fruiting, but the sun puts out all the spectrums and the plants know how to use it.

Mike
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Look, this might sound a bit mean, but trust me I don't want it to sound mean.
It seems like you "discovered" some technical data about light and got just a little bit overexcited.

LUX AND PAR ARE NOT IMPORTANT

People here use bulbs, so they can adjust the distance. more Lux is not going to help you. Plants use different wavelengths differently, and PAR is pretty much all of them.
Right now you are "feeding" your plants with the equivalent of tomatoes to people. sure tomatoes are good for you, but you can't live on tomatoes alone. they will grow, will give fruit... just not as healthy as they should.

I've said it multiple times, and you chose to ignore. obviously it's your choice, but your telling people it's better than getting some proper lights. 6500K is not blue, it's white. the good thing about most 6500K is the wide spectrum, "feeding" the plants relatively healthy. not the best you can get, but better than all red and some green (your bulbs).

Now about your sun argument. the sun is the freaking sun. what really makes it so good is not the Lux, but the WIDE SPECTRUM. when you use 2700K you don't have a wide spectrum, not even close. you just a bulb with high percentage of red and yellowish-green and maybe some blue which is PAR, but not what the plant needs.

------------

You can listen or maybe just think about that. it's ok if you don't, I just wanted the member who posted this will get the info.
You have a decent setup, not because of the damn Lux or PAR. because you have a decent setup, even with your weird and superficial logic, you'll get decent growth.
When you tell people the principle of growing light according to you, they might go and get a crappy setup which still matches your description.

Hope there's not hard feelings, just one of many ways I try to communicate (tried different approaches before).
Have a great day. :)
 
Omri said:
I've said it multiple times, and you chose to ignore. obviously it's your choice, but your telling people it's better than getting some proper lights. 6500K is not blue, it's white. the good thing about most 6500K is the wide spectrum, "feeding" the plants relatively healthy. not the best you can get, but better than all red and some green (your bulbs).

Now about your sun argument. the sun is the freaking sun. what really makes it so good is not the Lux, but the WIDE SPECTRUM. when you use 2700K you don't have a wide spectrum, not even close. you just a bulb with high percentage of red and yellowish-green and maybe some blue which is PAR, but not what the plant needs.
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Please forgive me for the ignorance Omri but are you basically saying that I should be trying to use the 6500K (Daylight) bulbs over the 2700K bulbs? This would produce better results.
 
JJBagoose said:
And the 6500K bulbs generally have a wider spectrum making them the better choice.
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Theoretically, yes. you still need to make sure you get the right wavelengths. each manufacturer uses different wavelengths to produce the same final color temperature.
 
Omri said:
Theoretically, yes. you still need to make sure you get the right wavelengths. each manufacturer uses different wavelengths to produce the same final color temperature.
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OK, thanks for the info. :)
 
JJBagoose said:
Hi,

I am trying to provide my plants some good light before they can go outside on a regular/permanant basis.

I had one of these GE General Purpose Energy Smart CFLs (100watt equivalent) that I am using over my plants.

Will this work? If so how well? I remember reading somewhere on here that there is a different type of CFL that should be used. Is there a big difference?

thanks,
jj
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jj, if all you want to do is get them to a good size for planting out all you need is cheap fluorescent tubes (cool white or warm white it does not matter). Now if you are looking to do something else other than planting them outside then you should look into something more elaborate as Omri has pointed out.

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Dale
 
thepodpiper said:
jj, if all you want to do is get them to a good size for planting out all you need is cheap fluorescent tubes (cool white or warm white it does not matter). Now if you are looking to do something else other than planting them outside then you should look into something more elaborate as Omri has pointed out.

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Dale
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Ah... I always enjoy pictures of your setup. looks like a small business. :P
6500K WILL give you that cool-looking purple color, so you might want some blue-violet colors anyway. ;)
 
Omri , thanks, actually I did put some of those every other bulb (10 in all) and they do seem to be growing better under those fixtures.

Dale
 
Omri,

I do choose to ignore you! No hard feelings or animosity, it's just mostof the readings I have done say PAR light is important, as is the amount of LUX. I'm sure you know what LUX is and the more lumens a plant receives, the better - at least to a point. Consider this before stating Lux is not important: Calculations based on a model made by PPO, show that tomatoes cultivated in the Netherlands, lit with 10,000 lux can produce 92 kg/m2 annually, and with 15,000 lux it is possible to produce 104 kg/m2. (This was a study dealing with using lighting in addition to the sun - you can read one study here: http://www.pllight.com/horticultural/sampleapps/vegetables.php )

With a higher amount of LUX, I do not need to keep the lights very close to the plants - a consideration when I have six inch cucumbers growing next to 1/2 inch tomatoes or peppers. There is enough light reaching the plants that they do not get leggy.

As for PAR, I believe what NASA and hundreds of reserches have said - plants absorb red and blue light while not absorbing yellow, green or violet. It seems quite foolish to waste electricity that will be used to excite phosphors that produce green and yellow light if my primary purpose it to promote plant growth.

I have no doubt one can achieve decent plant growth using 5000K lights and anyone who wants to certainly may. But science says while it makes the plants look better to the human eye, the light is not as efficent per watt. Here's what one lighting expert (from Envirolite) states: The main value of the PAR measurement is that it is the only measure that takes into account the actual light and light colours that the plant uses to energise its pigments and generate sugar energy, and it’s the sugar that makes your plants grow and produce such sweet fruits!

I will grant you that most reports say that 5000K lights tend to promote vegetation better but I am not finding that to be true. They are not as tall as plants that have been under 5000K lights but their leaves are larger.

YMMV and you are apparently doing a good job growing peppers. With all respect and in friendship, I feel it is best to let you run your railroad and I'll run mine!

Mike
 
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