Artificial light for potted plants. How to illuminate plants at home?
Artificial light is necessary mainly in winter, when almost all indoor plants lack sunlight due to shorter daylight hours. For this reason, many species grow less and lose their decorative value.
You can prevent it supplementing the sun’s deficiencies with artificial light. See how to choose the right lamps for plant lighting and how to illuminate plants with the benefit of their growth.
Why is it worth lighting plants
Many indoor plants do well during winter indoors with natural light coming through the windows, but some of them can benefit from additional lighting.
In particular, lighting plants in winter is necessary if you cannot lower the temperature in the apartment. With less sunlight reaching, many tropical houseplants enter a dormant period.
They require lowering the temperature, limiting watering and stopping fertilization.
All this to maintain a balance between the amount of incoming light and other growing conditions. However, we want to have warmth in our apartments.
Therefore, if we cannot lower the temperature, let’s support the growth of plants by lighting them.
The seedling of vegetables grown at home also requires additional lighting. The additional use of artificial lighting supports the growth of young plants and improves rooting of seedlings.
Sowing seeds early, you extend the cultivation period and the lack of sunlight you will replace by artificial light. Thanks to additional lighting, you will avoid “stretching” of seedlings, sagging shoots and tilting towards the window.
Thanks to the illumination of plants, it is also possible to grow fresh herbs or crispy lettuce at home in the middle of winter.
The effect of illumination on plant growth
Sunlight is essential for photosynthesis in green parts of plants. Thanks to this, plants create organic compounds necessary for growth and development. Potted plants that do not receive enough light grow less, and their leaves lose their intense color.
Young plants have weaker roots and their growth is slow. Only a small part of the radiation spectrum is takes part in photosynthesis – wavelengths of 400-700 nanometers (nm). This wavelength range is called photosynthetically active radiation (PAR).
Radiation both below and above this range is also essential for plants. Although it is not involved in photosynthesis, it initiates plant morphogenetic processes such as seed germination, growth, flowering and fruiting.
In order for the plant to develop properly, it is necessary to ensure the correct ratio of red light (600-700 nm) to blue light (wavelength 400-500 nm). Blue-violet light supports the growth of green mass in the early stages of plant development. While red light accelerates seed germination and shoot growth.
Good to know!
Blue and red colors, which are beneficial for plants, are tiring for the human eye. Fortunately, thanks to modern LED lamps that simultaneously generate light of different wavelengths, it is possible to obtain a color of light that is beneficial for plants and at the same time suitable for the human eye. Such lamps can be successfully used to illuminate plants in living quarters.
Which houseplants require additional lighting?
The plants’ need for light depends primarily on the conditions under which they grow in the natural environment. In this respect, potted plants can be divided into 3 groups:
Shade-loving plants that do best in dimly lit interiors are: ferns, anthuriums, ivy, aglaonema, calathea, arrowroot. These species only need light from 700 to 1000 lumens.
Plants requiring moderate lighting, preferring diffused light and tolerating light shadows well are: monstera, dracaena, difenbachia, anthurium, cheflera, philodendrons. They require an additional light intensity of 1,200 to 2,500 lumens.
Plants that need a lot of light: agave, aloe, bougainvillea, hibiscus, citrus, succulents – require 2,500-20,000 lumens, especially fruiting species.
How long and how to illuminate plants?
Artificial lighting is best as supplementary, in the evening or in the morning, extending the lighting time of plants to 12 to 14 hours a day.
The seedlings can be under light for 24 hours. Leaving the light on compensates for the lower power of artificial light compared to sunlight.
Artificial lighting must be close to the plants, but not close enough to cause burns. When producing seedlings, it is best to place the lighting about 15 cm above the plants, moving them up as they grow.
For this purpose, you can use a practical, fold-out lamp stand to illuminate the plants. The structure supporting the lighting attached to it is suspended by means of hooks and chains that facilitate adjustment of the lighting height.
Illuminate the lower potted plants from a distance of 30 cm, and the tall ones from a distance of 100-200 cm. Place the lamps at such a height that they illuminate the plants diagonally, providing the most light.
The metal suspension for LED lamps with a lifting mechanism is perfect for this task, which allows you to conveniently adapt them to plant growth.
What lamps to use for lighting
When deciding to illuminate plants in our homes, we can choose from fluorescent lamps and LED lamps.
The best choice are LED lamps, in which you can combine the desired colors of the spectrum to achieve the desired effect.
These lamps do not heat up, are economical, energy-saving and long-lasting, and available in many practical variants as single lamps, lighting strips or suspended panels.
In stores, there is also an LED bulb for lighting plants with a popular E27 thread, which we can screw into an ordinary house lamp, thus minimizing the costs of purchasing plant lighting. LED lamps are good as the main source of lighting for indoor plants and as supplementary lighting.
CFL lamps for lighting plants, also known as fluorescent lamps or fluorescent lamps, are as popular as LEDs and have many advantages. They are inexpensive, use little electricity, and are very durable.
Unfortunately, they are quite low power, so their use is good as a supplement to sunlight. They are gradually being replaced by LED lamps more and more.
you should not use ordinary LED bulbs providing white light. It is because they don’t produce blue light which is important for plant development.
