For much of the year, I have my handful of tropicals under indoor grow lights. I am wondering if others have had great success with a particular brand or type. At the moment I use these ceiling mounted LEDs (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S22KVH1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1). They seem to do an okay job keeping plants alive. However, some of my tropicals seem to like the lights better than others (and they don’t have strong growth). After reading Jerry Meislik’s book I thought my indoor setup would keep my tropicals moving right along, but I’m guessing my lighting might be off. Curious to know what others think.
This one looks pretty decent. I have some from hydrofarm agrobrite that have worked really well for the last few years.
In addition to the brand and power of the light there are other considerations. How close to your light are the plants? How many plants are sharing the space?
I have an 8 bulb t5 fixture that covers each 4x4 area really well. Its on an adjustable hanger so I can move it up and down to be as close to the plants as possible.
Like Bentleythekid I have a pair of Agrobrite lights hanging on Jumpstart frames for the few Trops I have. Just a note every few years it’s good to change out the bulbs on those types of lights. Your system looks like you would not have to deal with bulb swaps.
Amount of lumens, length of time under lights, and how close to the lights are the 3 considerations I keep an eye on.
I keep all sorts of tropicals under my spider farmer lights all winter and they love it. The nice thing about the full spectrum lights is they work with all plants. Spider farmers also have a knob to adjust the power level so you don’t need to mess around moving them up and down. The downside is the lights are pricey, but you get what you pay for.
I can’t find any recent pictures, but this is the setup. This pic was taken during a giant freeze a while ago when EVERYTHING came inside. Normally this is just for tropicals or fresh cuttings.
A couple of my earlier repotted bonsai just got moved out of this tent from a little protection. I used these lights for my grows and try to keep the light about 12-16” from the plants. There is ventilation to circulate air and leaving water runoff in the catch pans helps with the humidity. The tropicals I had in it over winter were very happy and put on growth all winter. The lights generate enough warmth and if you close the tent up it gets up to about 90° if the garage is between 60-70°.
These are the lights I like. One, they aren’t that hideous purple/pink hue that burns your eyeballs, they are quiet, and are dimmable. I’ve done 3 grows now with them and have been very happy with my yields.
Here is my indoor setup. Last year my lights were too close to the plants, I think. This year, I’m seeing slow, but consistent growth with the lights higher up. I think this slower growth is probably because I don’t have a tent or something else to keep the plants warm. This setup is in the basement and temps are about 60-65 F all of the time. Two additions this year is an indoor automated watering system called RainPoint (WiFi version is about $60) and fans to circulate the air. The watering system helps a lot, since we got back to doing some holiday traveling and couldn’t water by hand for about a week. One quick follow-up, how much do you think LEDs add to your energy bill? I know this will very by size. Right now, I think each light cost about $50 a month to run for 12 hours a day. How does that line up with your costs?
