10 Light

Seedling plants may have all their other needs met - nourishment, air circulation, correct temperature, water, good growing medium, humidity - but without sufficient light, they will amount to nothing. People are limited to using the suns energy in indirect ways, but green plants have the ability to absorb energy from sunlight directly and to use that energy to make food they can store. Light striking a green leaf sets in motion the process of photosynthesis - the conversion, through the action of chlorophyll, of water and carbon dioxide to simple sugars and starches. Only the green parts of leaves carry on this process. White stripes, blotched, and leaf margins do not contain chlorophyll, but red pigment in their cells masks the green.

The Facts about Light

Light, although it may appear white to us, is actually a mixture of a rainbow of colors. A full spectrum of light includes the following color gradations, each of which has a different effect on plant life. Green-Yellow Light. The chlorophyll in the plant reflects green-yellow light. Its effect on growth is thought to be negligible. Orange-Red Light . This light stimulates stem and leaf growth. Violet-Blue Light. Enzyme and respiratory processes are regulated by the violet-blue portion of the spectrum. In addition, this light encourages low, stocky growth. Infrared (Far-Red) Light. This stimulates germination of some seeds, but can inhibit others. Its full effect still isnt completely understood. Full-spectrum light, like sunlight, includes invisible ultraviolet rays, too. It is only the visible part of the spectrum described above, however, that provides the energy necessary for photosynthesis.

Making the Most of Natural Light

If you have a greenhouse, of course, your plants will receive the well-balanced light they need. The quality of sunlight that shines on windowsill-grown plants is the same as that in a glass-

enclosed greenhouse, but the intensity is much lower, especially on cloudy and early winter days when that sun is low in the sly. You can boost the amount of light your windowsill plants receive by positioning shiny metal reflectors or boards painted with flats white paint behind the plants to bounce the light back onto their leaves. Use foil-covered cardboard, shiny cookie tins, or other household findings. The resulting arrangements may not win any interior decorating prizes, but it does get more light to the leaves. Try it with eggplant, a real sun and heat lover. Another problem with raising seedlings on windowsills is that few houses have enough south-facing windows to provide a place for more than a few pots or flats. If you are limited to raising your seedlings at the window, choose the kinds of vegetables that most need an early start - main -crop tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, for example - and sow lettuce, cabbage and broccoli seeds in the open ground or in cold frame. You can also raise two generations of indoor seedlings if you put your tomatoes and peppers in a cold frame about the first of May and then use your windowsills for the melons and cucumbers. Where space is limited, you can plant seeds of a hardier tomato like Sub-Arctic directly in the garden rather than raise your early tomato seedlings indoors. Other places to put your seedlings where they will receive natural light include the following: A sunny corner in an outbuilding or barn; best in mid-to late spring in an unheated building. A roof garden, protected by a plastic tent, clothes, or some other covering, which can be effective but may be cumbersome to care for. A flat, black garage roof or house roof absorbs a lot of heat. Cold frames - see chapter 16. A solar greenhouse - see chapter 23.

Artificial Light
A few sources of artificial light are available to choose from, but fluorescent light seems to work the best. Sunlamps. Sunlamps might sound like a good light source for seedlings, but any gardener who tries them will find that they are death on plants. The high concentration of ultraviolet rays in the sunlamp interferes with normal plant growth. Incandescent light. Incandescent bulbs produce red light, which alone makes the plant grow leggy. They also produce a great deal of heat in relation to the amount of light they give off. It is not practical to try to raise seedlings under incandescent lights. In lighting supply stores, you will see special incandescent bulbs with built-in greenhouses or for houseplants. They must always be splashing the bulbs when watering the plants, or the blown glass may break. Fluorescent light. The discovery that plants do well under fluorescent light has made it possible for many more gardeners to get a good early start on the outdoor growing season and to produce plants as good as any raised in a greenhouse. Plants grown under fluorescent lights develop excellent color and stocky growth. Fluorescent light come closer than any other artificial illumination to duplicating the color spectrum of sunlight. In varying proportions, according to the

type of the bulb used, these lamps emit light from the red and blue bands of the spectrum. The tubes give off more than twice as much light per watt of power consumed as incandescent lights. Fluorescent tubes of various kind give off different shades of light, including warm white, cool white, natural white, and daylight. The different kinds of fluorescent powder used to coat the inside of the tube account for the range of light quality available. Reports of results from growing plants under fluorescent light at the North Carolina State University School of Agriculture and Life Sciences and at Cornell University, as well as from experienced nonprofessional gardeners, indicate the following: plants do well under a variety of tubes combinations. Special plant-raising tubes are not necessary for starting vegetable plants. Best result are often obtained by mixing tube colors: for example, using one warmwhite and one cool-white or daylight tune in each fixture.

Cool-white tubes emit a bright bluish white light. Warm-white tubes have a faint tan or pinkish cast. The cool-white tubes are the easiest to find, but most hardware stores will order warm-white ones for you if they dont have them in stock. Special plants growth tubes give more blue-red than green-yellow light. Their effect on plants is mostly cosmetic: the plants look good but do not necessarily grow any better than they do under cool-white bulbs, which are the most efficient. In addition, the special-purpose fluorescent tubes are more expensive and have a shorter useful life. In the early days of fluorescent tube experiments, incandescent lights were thought to be necessary for flowering, but it is now known that they are unnecessary. They generate so much heat that they cause rapid drying of soil and air, and they burn out much sooner than fluorescent tubes.

Using Fluorescent Light Efficiently

The effectiveness of your fluorescent lights will be influenced by the way you use care for them. Length of Tubes. If you are preparing a fluorescent light setup for your plants, buy the longest tubes you can manage to fit into the space you have. Why? Light at the ends of the tubes is weaker than that in the center and falls off more as the tube ages. If my experience is any guide, you never have enough light space under the tubes. The more you have, the more plants youre tempted to start, and when theyre transplanted, youll need all the space you can muster. Tubes are available in 12-,18-, 24-, 36-, 48-, 72-, and 96-inch lengths. Each foot of length uses 10 watts of power. If at all possible, avoid using tubes under three feet in length; they simply dont put out as much light for the power they use. Forty-eight-inch tubes are long enough to be efficient but short enough to fit conveniently into most household arrangements. Amount of Light. For growing seedlings, your fluorescent light setup should provide 15 to 20 watts per square foot of growing area. A single tube is, in most cases, both insufficient and inefficient, unless you have a long, skinny tray of seedlings under it. If you must use a single tube, construct a simple frame to hold foot-square mirrored tiles on both sides of the flats to reflect more light. A double row of tubes will give enough light for a flat up to about 16 inches wide, and two parallel double rows, like those attached to plant-growing carts, are even more efficient.

Types of Tube. If you are buying components and putting together your own light center or centers, you have a choice of the channel tube - a single- or double-mounted tube on a slim metal base, without a reflector - or the more common two-tube industrial - type fixture with a bent metal reflector. Channel tubes work well on shelves and undersides of cabinets, especially if surrounding surfaces are painted white to reflect more light. Industrial reflector fixtures may sometimes be obtained secondhand, but they are also widely available in lighting supply stores and from household mail-order catalogs. High-Intensity Discharge Lamps. If price is no subject, the most efficient lights you can buy today are the high-intensity discharge lamps, which - along with their fixtures - are costly to purchase but less expensive to run. There are two kinds of high-intensity discharge lamps: metal halide and high-pressure sodium. The metal halide HID lamps produce 94 lumens per watt (including ballast); cool-white fluorescent tubes produce 66 lumens per watt; and special plantgrowth lights give off even less light: 37 lumens per watt for Agrilite, only 20 for Gro-Lux. The high-pressure sodium type is even more efficient (132 lumens per watt), but because its light has an unnatural yellow cast, some gardeners prefer the more natural, slightly less efficient white light of the metal halide lamps; those lose power more rapidly than sodium lamps. HID lamps cannot be mounted as close to the plant as fluorescent lights; the current limit is two feet for lights with wide-angle reflectors and six feet for those with standard mounting. According to an industry spokesman, metal halide lamps of less than 400 watts, and those mounted in other than vertical positions, constitute a radiation hazard. Cracked bulbs can emit eye-damaging rays, much like those released by welding (according to letter to the editor from Agrilite Company official, Horticulture, March 1987, p.7). Efficient Use. My first grow light was a 20-watt tabletop stand - a toy that helped me to get through a long northern Midwest winter when snow covered the ground until April. I raised tomato, pepper, lettuce, and pansy seedlings under that little light, and spring came after all. By then, of course, I was hooked. The following year, after moving back to Pennsylvania, to an old house full of nooks and crannies, I had a decentralized system - plant lights on every floor, from the basement to the kitchen to the bathroom, and I began raising all the seedlings we needed, racing the reason to bring the earliest possible lettuce and cabbage to the table. When we moved to our farm, we accepted a plainer, simpler house at first because we were hungry for land. In an old house that boasted not a single closet, we needed our shelves for books and canned garden produce, so I splurged on a four-shelf plant cart with four 40-watt tubes attached to three of the shelves. I was delighted with the way my plants grew under fluorescent lights. They were stocky and green, with a special bloom to them. My only regret was that the lights consumed electric power. I tries to use them as efficiently as possible. The following tips can help you to get the most out of your lights. 1. Keep the tubes clean. Dust on the tubes decreases their efficiency. 2. Add reflecting surfaces to your setup. Use of reflecting surfaces like mirrors or aluminum foil under and around the lights gives the plants more light for the same power output. 3. Use flat white paint on shelves and reflecting boards. Flat white paint reflects more light than glossy paint. 4. Dont let the temperature drop too low. Fluorescent lamps seem to function best if the temperature doesnt fall below 500F (100C). Lights operated at around 400F (40C) may not perform as well.

5. Keep fluorescent lights turned on. To get more usable time out of the tubes, avoid turning them on and off more than absolutely necessary. A long burning time after each start is conducive to more economical operation and longer tube life. Most lamps last one to two year (10,000 to 20,000 hours) if turned to only one or two times a day. Efficiency decreases by 10 percent after a few months of use. 6. Get double use out of your lights. It is also possible, Ive found, to save electric power by installing fluorescent lights for plants in spots where illumination is needed anyway. For example, we kept seedlings fluorescent light stand on top of the refrigerator where the light it shed helped to illuminate a dark corner. We also installed a fixture on the underside of a shelf in the bathroom of our old house - light for the room and the plants. An imaginative look at your own home surroundings will no doubt suggest other possibilities. 7. Make use of the warmth of the lights. The tubes themselves give off little heat, but the ballast - the step-down transformer that makes it possible for the lights to use household current does become warm. Most fluorescent lights have a ballast at the end of the fixture. Some recent arrangements have a remote ballast. Judicious planning of flat placement in relation to the warmer end zones of the tubes can make it possible to utilize this extra warmth to advantage, for example, in germinating seeds or starting sweet potato slips. 8. Reuse old tubes. Since light brightness decreases with the age of the tube, many gardeners routinely replace their seed-starting fluorescent tubes each year. You can still use the old tubes for general lighting purposes.

Grow-Light Setups
How you arrange your grow-light setup depends on the amount of space you have and the type of light you will be using. Let Three Be Light. Rapid-start fluorescent fixtures may occasionally develop starting problems if humidity around the light center is unusually high. Ventilation to promote better air circulation usually solves this problem. If you notice that a tube flickers, the starter - a small metal cylinder probably needs to be replaced. When space is limited . Not many of us have an entire room to devote to plants. A basement is often the most spacious area available, and that usually works very well unless furnace heat affects the plants or water is not readily at hand. Sometimes a bit of shoe horning is required to fit lights into an apartment or small home. Once, when plant space really got tight around here, I even tied a 36-inch two-tube light fixture to the underside of a piano bench so that it was suspended a few inches above a flat of plants. A crazy-looking arrangements, but it kept my tomato seedlings going until the cabbage and lettuce on the big cart were ready to graduate to the cold frame and leave room for the next wave of plants. If youre looking for ways to sneak in another light fixture or two or three, perhaps the following list will suggest some possibilities: use a fluorescent study lamp you may already have. Install fixtures on bookshelves or storage shelves. Make a closet into a fluorescent light center with several tiers of lights and storage space for plant supplies.