Choosing A Lamp For Supplementary Lighting Of Seedlings And Indoor Plants

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

There is no life without light

Recently, when the price of land has risen, and each gardener is trying to place on his site as many vegetable and fruit crops, including heat-loving ones, the problem of growing seedlings has become very urgent. Moreover, the seedlings are not any, but of high quality. The existing greenhouses cannot yet meet all the needs for seedlings. And her condition does not always meet the requirements of vegetable growers. Of course, some farmer, having bought a huge batch of seedlings, several hundred dead plants, may not even notice, but if the same happens to a private trader who has every “root” in his account, it will already be a serious problem.

That is why most gardeners prefer to grow seedlings on their own at home, on window sills, creating optimal temperature, humidity, nutrition and, of course, light for the plants. At the same time, everyone knows that a lack of light is one of the main reasons for a sharp decline in the quality of seedlings. That light that suits the people living in the apartment, which seems to them bright, the plants will clearly lack. Is there a way out of this situation?

Of course there is. For a long time, gardeners began to supplement their seedlings with various light sources. In recent years, industrial enterprises have also begun to produce special lamps for supplementary lighting of seedlings. Of course, all manufacturers tout their product, but each lamp has both pros and cons, so let's talk about supplementary lighting in more detail:

Of course, ordinary incandescent lamps that are familiar to us are not suitable for this purpose. The reason is simple: visible light is only a tiny part of their spectrum, the rest is thermal radiation, and it only helps to stretch out seedlings. For additional lighting, it is better to use cold glow lamps.

For example, the Reflex lamp, a domestic, rather reliable, successfully combining high radiation efficiency and a spectrum that is very favorable for photosynthesis, has proven itself well. The lamp gives a constant, flicker-free, luminous flux and has a rather long service life at a low price. The undoubted advantage of the lamp is the presence of a built-in mirror reflector in it, which immediately reduces its dimensions and does not require the installation of additional reflective devices - all the light goes to the plants and is not scattered. This sodium lamp creates the light effect of the setting sun, absolutely not irritating the human eye, and the owners of the seedlings have to endure the forced neighborhood for quite a long time.

There are other cold light bulbs.

Very economical lamp Reflex marks (DNaZ) 70W. One such lamp is enough for a one and a half meter windowsill.

Reflax HNaT 70 W lamp is a cheaper version of the aforementioned lamp due to the lack of a built-in mirror reflector and smaller dimensions. Such a lamp is enough for a meter-long windowsill.

Well proven fluorescent lamps - LD, MDC, LTB, LB - output power of 40 to 80 watts. They give light cold white or warm white. All of these lamps will also require additional specular reflectors, which slightly increases the size of the structure. Moreover, if you decide to take weak lamps (40 W), then two or even three of them will be needed per meter of the windowsill, and one lamp of 80 W is enough for one.

Interesting is Fluora - a phytoluminescent lamp from Osram, which has a pink glow. This new development has proven itself well. With an amazingly low power - 18 W, the lamp, provided that an additional mirror reflector is installed, will illuminate a windowsill up to a meter long.

LFU-30 is a cheaper analogue of Fluora, differs in a similar pink glow, slightly higher power - 28 W, also requires the installation of an external mirror reflector. Effectively illuminates the area of a window sill or apartment with dimensions of 0.4x0.7 m.

But it is better not to take a General Electric Enrich Spot R63 lamp, in fact, these are ordinary incandescent lamps, under which it is very warm, only the glass of these lamps is made differently. It is like a filter that does not transmit a range of rays.

Lamps Philips spot white are quite expensive, they improve the shades of blue, red, green and white colors, which, of course, bad for plants and flowers, but in fact the lamp is not very effective.

In general, all phytolamps are very effective for photosynthesis and economical in terms of energy consumption, but it is better to install them in non-residential premises, since the lilac-pink glow emitted by them is completely alien to the human eye, which sometimes leads to severe eye irritation and can periodically cause headaches. Undesirable and purely fluorescent lamps without adding the word "phyto" to the name, since they have low efficiency in the red part of the spectrum, however, they have good efficiency in the violet part, so they are often still used for additional lighting.

It is necessary to illuminate the seedlings before planting them in the ground, and even on the sunny side of the apartments, both morning and evening additional lighting is necessary, and in cloudy weather - also daytime. On the shaded windowsills, the seedlings are illuminated all day long, regardless of the weather outside.