so this coming season i want to try and start them inside and bring them out around april or may. I've read about a few guys who just flick on the lights for an hour in the middle of the night to keep the plants in veg. this idea naturally sounds great to me since i dont have the money to be balling out on full blown supplemental lighting for a large greenhouse. i'm wondering what is the least amount of watts/sqft i'd need to successfully disrupt their dark period and keep them in veg. im sure its not too much... but im having trouble figuring out exactly how i need to set this up. hoping to keep the cost as low as possible. if you told me candles were good enough, i'd be out there every night striking matches to save cash also, you think they'll veg well rolling steady through the spring with just natural light and that single hour of disruption at night? i've only ever grown indoors before and theyve always been on a full 20-4 or 18-6 in veg. sorry if this had been covered but i cant find the info i need after pretty extensive googling. pretty much only turn up results about the minimum amount of hours and timing, not specifically the amount of light in watts or any other measurement i can work off of.
keeping it in Veg is easier than you think just DON'T let it get 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness.AND don't deprive it of too much decent light (16-18) hrs a day..will insure Veg mode. if it were a cloudy day outside it would get less than that but still continue vegging. To induce flowering a strict diet of 12 hour darkness is needed. GFP Sent from my SM-G600FY using Tapatalk
35 watts is more of a baseline for what is appropriate for actual vegetative growth. I dont need enough light to keep em healthy, i'm just trying to figure out what is the bare minimum for being able to disrupt their dark hours in the middle of the night for an hour or so. i'm sure it would be wayyyyy less than 35 watts per sq ft. so far the best answer i've found online is "barely anything will do the trick". i'm hoping to get a more concrete number or something. how would it be measured? lux? lumens? i'm hoping to spend as little as possible and it seems most people reccomend floro
hi man, im growing in a metal frame arch greenhouse, its midwinter here in Australia, with 14hrs darkness to 10hrs light, my plants are approx 3' high with no sign of budding, the plants get a solid 8hrs direct sunlight on them, then approx 1hr before the sun sets i have a small 5watt LED come via timer on till 2.30am every night, i have just flipped them to 12/12hrs daylight/dark, the debt of 2 hrs is made up of running the 5watt LED just for 2hrs after sunset to make up the 12hrs lite, also i use a blackout cover so neighbors do not see LED at nite, i remove the cover every morning before sunrise. i have no mains power on here & use solar power with batteries. so long story short if you are getting solid daylight direct onto your plants for a good amount of time its ok to supplement additional hours of light via a small LED as shown, but if your plants are receiving only supplemented light you will need to meet the watts per metre/per foot as described earlier for healthy plant growth
5 watt LED for each plant? thats it? well that makes my whole plan plan seem much more do-able! can i ask how many lights you are running, and what kind of solar set up you have to support it? I wanna tuck my greenhouse away on a hillside pretty damn far into my property, where it would be extremely expensive to run power too. I've been going crazy trying to figure out the math for an appropriately sized solar system based on also having the cheapest minimal lighting set up that can keep my plants in veg. i'm thinking of getting like 6-8 t8 LEDs for my 36 plants. i'm having trouble figuring out everything between watts per ft vs lumens per sqft, how far to space the pots, how far to space the lights, etc etc. kind of twisting up my brain right now
hi again, my greenhouse is 20' x 10' with 65 plants(expecting 30-40% to be males), im only running 2 x 5watt LED(total) to extend the daylight hours from sunset approx 5pm through to 2.30am, my solar setup is pretty basic at 4 x 200watt panel with some good quality batteries, but this runs TV etc at nite, if your just running 2 x 5watt LED then i would imagine just 1 x 100watt solar panel with suitable battery & timer would suffice, again...if the plants in your greenhouse are getting solid direct sunlight for a good many hours during daytime they do not need the intensive supplemented lighting that they would if solely reliant like an indoor grow, pic below is the 12v 5watt bulbs i use
below is the 12v timer i use available from ebay for $5-$10 you may need to search youtube for wiring up and operation of this unit, as the instructions are very lacking, ive copied youtube instructions but cannot find the original youtube clips to add here? also i do not think item is weatherproof