for fungus gnats,
yellow sticky trap seems work well enough for me. It captures most of the gnats. not a big problem for me.
for spider mites,
I did battle with mites outbreak during my 1st year trial and I lost. They came and go never end. Once they started, I do not know how to get them under control! However since 2nd year, i no longer have mites issue. I changed couple my practices seems works for me:
“Before moving outdoor plants indoors you MUST give them a good soak with an insecticide” (as you stated in another thread)
before season begin, I use Clorox wipes to clean the surface of grow tent.
maintaining humidity (RH) 50%+
always wash hands with soap before work on the strawberry!!
Hadnt seen that study, but ive read a fair amount about it in the past. Strip lights are easier to build than cobs in general. You dont have to worry about heat dissipation much and they are mostly plug and play as long as you pay attention to voltages and max power. From my testing, as long as strips like I posted above are secured to some aluminum strip, they can be pushed pretty hard without any issues. If you keep them at 700ma you dont even need any heatsink materials, they can be open air… My preference is for 3000k 90cri led with peak from 630 to 650 but ive seen nice plants grown with more blue and the strips are hard to find in 90cri, most are 80cri but they seem to work well also.
When I renovated my house a couple of years ago with modern recessed lighting, Phillips was making a big push into the market with the improved more natural looking A19 LED bulbs. I replaced all of the incandescent A19’s in my house (about 30 total) with LED’s and by my napkin math the bulbs have paid for themselves at least a few times over by now, esp. when factoring in heat inefficiency. I think a lot of people miss that in calculating the energy savings
Here is an ornamental onion I started from a bulblette this fall, its over 2ft now and seems fairly happy. Its the kind that has big purple flowers at the top when grown outdoors. Probably wont flower inside…
Quick update on indoor strawberries planted in 2018. They are in full production mode now.
Probably doing something right this year. nice looking and large strawberries.
Couple problems: fruits are heavy and they need additional support. My current setup are not easy to add such support.
Incandescent are cheaper up front and in my experience they last just as long as CFL and LED. These new bulbs never last anywhere near as long as the package says they will, for me at least. We still have a few incandescent bulbs in closets that we don’t use much light in.
Of course, you can often get free LEDs from your local power company. In the northeast there’s a discount store called Ocean State Job Lot where you can get 100% back in the store’s points for LED bulbs, most of the time. It’s some brand I’d never heard of but I actually like them better than the name brand LEDs I purchased from Walmart.
By the way — thank you for all you’ve posted about grow lights. Now you have me thinking. I saw LED shop lights on 100% back in store points at Job Lot a week or two ago. They were cheapo, 100% disposable, you throw away the whole thing fixture and all when the bulb is done. I almost bought them, maybe I’ll see if they’re still on sale. Would these be OK for starting seeds or are special bulbs really a better investment?
led shop light will work for starting seeds. led bulbs actually used to be better, companies have designed newer ones to fail sooner, primarily by decreasing heatsink material which increases led temp and reduces life. they don’t want to make bulbs that last 20 to 30 years! cfl are crap imo, incand are horribly inefficient. i think they convert about 15% if electricity used into actual light. good led convert closer to 50% to light and the best are 70% efficient now. really no comparison. if anyone is interested i have a few good leds that i built I’d b willing to sell, just not using them right now. 100w and 150w units. another thing about led is the spectrum is much better than incan or cfl. higher quality light makes plants happier.
for seed starting I’d get led strips. if u are somewhat handy it’s easy to build your own light that will produce easy more light than a shop light, last longer and have a built in dimmer. shop lights can work tho if u don’t want to bother. this is a good site to educate yourself on led… http://ledgardener.com/diy-guides
Hi @mrsg47
Currently, I am using 4 inch square plastic pots, 3.5" height.
I think size is a bit small. as mature plant, I will need to water them almost every day.
Not much going on yet. Bunch of brassicas (in cells), and just sowed some peas, onions, beets, leeks, celery, lettuce (under the plastic on the right)
My growing setup is more suited to strip lights than the box arrangement so these I got on Amazon. I’m trying them in place of my 4 - T5 fluorescent fixture. I started using them last fall for my winter starts and they seemed to do just fine. With 12 hr the brassicas should be bustin’ to go in between 4-6 weeks. We’ll see.
As far as costs are concerned, I knew there would be some savings but was kinda shocked. So here is my little spread sheet. I used a kill-a-watt meter to get the wattage on several things I use - just to see, and this run is for 15 hours and 3.5 months of operation. So typically each season I use two 4-bulb T5’s and one 2-bulb T5. So for 15 hr and 3.5 months it came to $107.49 in just lighting costs. Maybe our electrical costs are higher than y’all but this was an eye-opener.
don’t forget to count heat produced as a savings during winter… basically those lights are mini electric heaters. it’s a win, win, unless u are venting outside, then it’s lost mostly.
One more thing to consider when looking at efficiency is that we are really trying get light energy to plants. I start trees indoors in root pruning pots in the winter, so light color is not a factor for me. They spend such a small amount of their lives indoors spectrum in inconsequential at this stage of growth. I do understand how folks looking to go through flowering and fruiting stages indoors have different issues.
Light energy diminishes with the distance squared. So, I prefer a cool light that can be kept close to plants. I typically use shop lights. That form factor fits well with my root pruning trays and I can organize trees based on height and hang the lights at an angle adjusting as necessary to keep them a couple inches from the trees as they grow.
Most of my lights now are fluorescent because they are cool and were the best value when I originally constructed my grow chambers. They put out a lot of lumens when fixtures are hung a couple inches a part.
LED replacement bulbs for shop lights are coming down in price and becoming cost competitive, especially if you believe the advertised lifespans. I have not tried them yet. It is not hard to remove a ballast from my fixtures. This would allow me to keep all the current rigging for light adjustment (cord with prussic knots that I can slide).
I’d like to hear from anyone who is using these 4’ LED replacement bulbs for fluorescent tubes. How is your cost per lumen compared to fluorescents? How is the heat output compared to fluorescent bulbs? Can they be hung as close? Any feel for actual lifespan?
I don’t intend to replace all my fluorescent bulbs immediately, but I wonder if I should start doing this as I run out of fluorescent bulbs?
if u have a bunch to replace consider alibaba or Ebay i got my garage replacements the quite cheap. split them with 2 friends, had 2 order 1 case min, like 30 or so fixtures.
I plan on doing this when I start my seeds in a few weeks. I already bought the bulbs back in the Fall when I was getting some to use in fixtures over fish tanks… I haven’t done it with my seedling starting yet, but on fish tanks what @TheDerek says about twice the light seems about right. Plants seem very happy in those tanks.
I don’t know what the energy savings will be specifically, but since I was due to replace my fluorescent bulbs anyway, it was an easy decision.
I do have to rewire the fixtures to cut out the starters/balasts, so that is a downside since the two different types of fixtures I’ve rewired were awkward to work on.
you probably mean equivalent watt fluorescent. good led in strips put out over 200 lumens / watt. good t8 fluorescent is around 80 lumens / watt. spectrum has some influence also. ‘lumens are for humans’ is a very accurate phrase. with plant u are better getting warmer colors that produce less lumens but more light the plants can use.
When I put my hand on the T8 fluorescent it feels about the same as the LED replacement bulbs. My Infrared thermometer actually shows 92 degrees for the surface of the LEDs and 104 for the Fluorescents, but it is hard to measure and my thermometer seems a bit erratic. Either way, I think I can probably keep them as close as the fluorescents, but I might keep a bit more space since the LEDs are brighter.
However since 2nd year, i no longer have mites issue. I changed couple my practices seems works for me:
