Can’t Help Myself! I Got 3 More Grow Lights!
Now that I have brought my tender plants inside for the winter, I need more grow lights. That is a never-ending cycle, right? More plants, more grow lights. I guess my only worry now is having enough electrical outlets!
If you are a reader of my blog for a while now, you know that I have the basement garden room that I use for a lot of my plants. Yes, it does look different in every photo because I am always changing it around. I even helped my husband put caster wheels on the shelves so I could roll them into different configurations.
The latest “new” shelf is one of the shelves I had outside for the summer. It was one that my husband built many years ago to use in our previous home’s basement. Seems logical to me to use a shelf that I already had and only need to buy more grow lights than to have to buy more shelving too.
FYI These shelves are NOT the ones that I got from the grocery store really cheap and painted them up for the deck. Those were put outside and stay outside.
Next year, I will decide whether or not that this one I am newly hanging more grow lights on will go outside. Probably not. Unhooking all the grow lights would be so much trouble so I may as well keep the shelf inside.
What Type of Grow Lights Do I Use?
Currently I am using just the ordinary shop lights that I find in the Big Box stores like Lowe’s, Home Depot or Menard’s.
These most recent grow lights I got from Menard’s. I choose the lights with the most lumens, and as you can see, these are 6000 lumens.
Don’t feel that you could only grow inside if you bought expensive, full spectrum, rainbow colored, seizure-inducing, Leprechaun-endorsed, fancy-schmansy lights that cost an arm and a leg.
As many plants as I have, I would probably need to have about 20 or 30 of those and that would set me back some serious coin. This has worked for me for years! Some day I may change. But not today!
What Kind Of Light Does The LED Light Make?
These LED lights I use are producing a light similar to daylight as it shows on the box. Since it is most similar to daylight or outside light, this makes sense to me as a perfect light to grow inside.
Or let me say, perfectly adequate. That seems as if it will give me growth I need. I am looking for foliage health in the winter, not growing vegetables or flowers. (Though flowers would be a great bonus!)
This unit has three Sansevieria Moonshine in pots that are sitting just in front of the light bar because the Moonshines are getting too high to fit underneath. I will need to adjust the length of the light bar supports to fit the size of the plants.
On the other hand, if the plants seemed to be stretching or etiolating from lack of light, I can lengthen the supports to make the lights closer and more intense.
Right now I am using a large “U” shaped formation for my shelves but I have had them in parallel before, almost like library shelves.
I find that this arrangement allows me to get around to all the plants more easily. And the plants are all growing well at the moment.
Right there in the front to the left is my Asparagus Fern, The Foxtail variety, that I have in hypertufa. It has bloomed this year outside and now that I brought it inside, it has borne fruit.
Those red berries do contain seeds that I could plant for more plants. Maybe I will try some. The plant is getting larger and I fear those rhizomes will break or split my hypertufa soon. She will need to be transplanted into a bigger hypertufa planter.
Well, thanks for visiting today and I hope you have a place for your plants inside this winter. Get more grow lights if you need them! Even a goose-neck lamp can work for a plant. I have one in my laundry room. No windows in there!