How Do You Keep Your Plants Healthy and Looking Good?

What do you really want to do with your indoor plants? Show them off to others, or merely enjoy them yourself? Are you growing vegetables or herbs, or are your plants only for display?

In any case, if you want beautiful plants, there are some issues that affect the health and appearance of your indoor plants that you’ll want to consider. Among them are ventilation, temperature control, and the possible use of a greenhouse.

But one of the most important things you can do is think about the quality and types of artificial lights you use to grow your plants. Grow lights are usually the most expensive item in your indoor garden, so it’s important that you make the right choices to meet your requirements.

What Do You Need to Make Your Plants Beautiful?

Naturally, for your plants to thrive, you’ll want to consider how much light to give them. To figure how much light a plant will require, think about how and where it grows best in its native environment. Most vegetables, for example, grow best in direct sunlight, which means that you should supply as much light as possible to grow vegetables indoors.

On the other hand, foliage plants like Philodendron can thrive in full shade and can grow without problem with a relative small amount of artificial light. More exotic plants like Bromeliads will grow in varying conditions depending on the plant species.

Some exotic plants grow in dark jungle shade, while other varieties grow in direct sunlight. The illumination required for growth indoors depends upon the particular plant being grown.

Why Your Plants Need Darkness

Plants require periods of darkness. Light (so-called photo-periods) and darkness and the relative length of each have an effect on plant growth.

Recent studies have shown that it is not just the duration of the light which affects growth, but the length of the darkness which follows. The daily dark period affects seeding and flowering of most plants. Nearly all plants prefer a period of darkness each day for normal growth, even though many plants can grow under continuous light.

Why You Should Be Careful with Incandescent Lights

You should take special care when using incandescent bulbs, since they will burn plants if placed closer than 24 inches. This presents a tradeoff, since you want plenty of illumination that comes from closeness without burning the plant from the heat generated by an incandescent bulb.

The best use for most incandescent growing lights is to highlight indoor plant groupings, rather than as a true "growing" light. You can use one of the newer color-corrected spot grow bulbs for supplemental light or to highlight a single plant, like an indoor bonsai tree or an orchid.

Most incandescent lamps will last about 750 hours.

Why Are Fluorescent Lights Cheaper Than Incandescents to Use?

When should you use fluorescents? Recent technological advances in fluorescent lighting give you a lot of growing options. Fluorescent lights work fine for starting seeds or for providing light to cuttings.

They are also good for growing plants requiring cool weather and can be used in your basement year round. Herbs, leaf lettuce, and spinach can thrive under fluorescent lights.

But the light fluorescent bulbs emit is not strong enough to illuminate an area more than eight to ten inches below the lamp. Although they are more efficient than incandescent lights, fluorescents are still much less efficient than High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights.

A rule of thumb is to keep standard fluorescent tubes within four inches of the tops of the plants. Since the bulbs are not hot to touch to the touch, you don’t have to worry about plants getting burned unless they are actually touching the tube. Fluorescent bulbs are good for grow lighting and display for small cacti, african violets and succulents, as well as a number of kitchen herbs.

Recent strides in color blending allow full-spectrum fluorescents to be one of the truest color rendering bulbs on today’s market. Standard fluorescent bulbs have doubled the efficiency of incandescent bulbs, and produce two times as many lumens per watt of energy consumed and have an average usable life span of up to 20,000 hours – greater than 25 times longer than an incandescent.

Why Are Metal Halide HID Lights Popular for Horticulture?

Metal halide lights are efficient light sources that can deliver a white light that has a range of 2700 to 5500 Kelvin degrees. The Color Rendering Index (CRI) measures how closely an artificial light source like metal halide matches the natural colors of sunlight, with 100 being a perfect score.

Metal halide has a typical Color Rendering Index (CRI) ratings in the mid-60's to mid-70's. Some metal halide lamps even obtain CRI's in the 80s, depending on the lamp chemistry.

Through experimentation engineers have been able to alter the characteristics of the light output by varying the blend of chemicals in the metal halide arc tube. The flexibility in metal halide lamp design makes them so versatile.

Metal halide technology is popular among horticulturists because it produces a white light that is the closest to the natural sunlight that people prefer.

The appearance of a plant growing under most metal halide lights is almost the same to plants growing outside, which makes metal halide the preferred lamp for most indoor growers.

Metal halide lamps used for horticulture have been engineered for increased red spectrum added to increase flowering and fruiting without sacrificing the appearance of plants.

Metal halide bulbs are roughly five times more efficient than incandescent lamps and can last 25 times longer, with an effective lifespan between 10,000 and 20,000 hours.

Why Are High Pressure Sodium Lights Good for Flowering?

High pressure sodium lamps are typically used in applications such as parking lots where color of the lighting is less important, such as street lighting as well as for supplemental greenhouse lights.

High pressure sodium (HPS) lamps have the advantage of enhancing the fruiting and flowering process in plants. The spectrum of orange/red light that HPS produces is what plants use in their reproductive processes, which in general will produce larger harvests of higher quality flowers or fruits.

The problem with growing under HPS alone is that plants grow to be taller with a longer internodal length than plants grown under metal halide lights which produce a bluer spectrum.

Another downside to HPS is that plants may not appear very healthy growing only under these lights. High pressure sodium bulbs emit yellow lighting (2200K) and thus have a poor color rendering index of 22.

Why Will Getting the Wrong Lighting Advice Haunt You Later?

Unless you want to spend hours on understanding the technical minutia of what lighting works best for the particular plants that you have, you’d probably appreciate some solid advice right now, right?

Otherwise you risk buying lighting products with characteristics wrong for your plants. That could seriously harm your plants. And with all the care you give them, you certainly don’t want that, do you?

Lighting technology is improving every day, and it's getting harder to keep up with all the changes. Luckily, you don't have to be a know-it-all to design great lighting - all you need is the right know how.

Choosing the right supplier is probably the most critical step you can take in meeting your lighting needs. Why? Because a good supplier will provide you with the necessary expertise to guide you through the design and hardware choices you will have to make.

But before you decide on where to purchase your plant grow lights there are several things you need to consider first:

What are the light requirement of the various plants you’re growing? How much light does a plant need? Consider where it grows in its natural environment and how much light it normally gets.

Efficiency of light output, influencing how much you’ll have to pay for the light required to effectively grow your plants.

Long life – Make sure that your choice is for lighting products with high reliability ratings. Otherwise, you could end up replacing a unit sooner than you expected.

Easy installation – There’s nothing more frustrating than an installation that’s unnecessarily complicated. Make sure that the ballast or fixture you choose comes with adequate instructions and doesn’t require overly complicated installation steps.

Saves energy – If you’re interested in savings over the long term, consider the operating cost of the unit. This is measured in cents per unit of time.

Warranty – You’ll want to look at the warranty and make sure you’re protected just in case the unit your purchase fails to perform like it should.

Will Your Supplier Help You with These Questions?

With so many suppliers out there, how do you decide which one to buy from? The one that helps you answer your grow light questions the best probably has a pretty good shot at your business, isn’t that fair to say?

Here are some questions you’ll want to ask your supplier about:

Name brands – Does the supplier offer name brand products? Where are the lights made? Are you confident in the quality?

Price – Are the prices competitive? Does the supplier offer discounts?

Warranties – How much support does the supplier give you in understanding the warranties? How comprehensive is the warranty of the particular lights you are considering?

Shipping – How much will shipping cost? Does the supplier offer discounted or free shipping with a certain type of purchase?

Support – How good is the customer support? Does the supplier offer a toll-free telephone number? Will someone answer their phone when you have a problem?

Financing options – Is the supplier willing to finance your purchase? How easy do they make it? How favorable are the terms?

Secure ordering – If you order online, does the supplier guarantee the security of your order?

Privacy protected – Does the supplier guarantee that your email address will not be sold or used without your permission by a third party?

What do the past customers of the supplier say about them and their service?

How can you find a supplier that’ll meet these requirements? Well, you’re in luck!

Introducing Access Discounts –
An Ideal Solution for Your Plant Grow Light Needs!

You can purchase your grow lights at Access Discounts with confidence. Why? Because all products sold at Access Discounts are of contractor quality and are shipped directly to our warehouse from the manufacturer.

Here’s what you get:

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