I found out today from someone here on Grass City how to grow outdoors year round with zero increase in the electricity bill and zero need for a greenhouse and thought I would sure it with all the other beginners who need a helping hand. http://www.homedepot.com/p/Hampton-Bay-Outdoor-Solar-Black-LED-70-Lumen-Spotlight-SS23C-M8-BKT-CPK1/204471418 What you do is you put it in the low power mode, which lasts 10 hours, instead of the full power mode which lasts only 6. You will need several of these per plant and they're a little bit pricey but considering the savings in electricity bills and the cost of all the equipment necessary for an indoor grow it is WELL worth every penny. Reviewers say it is very bright. I know that solar lights aren't all necessarily crap as my city has some on trees that are very bright. This is apparently a good one and it comes with a realistically sized solar panel for real light intensity and duration of use. I believe it is automatically configured to turn on once the sun goes down so there's no need to worry about timers or anything like that. Just put them in low power mode, duct tape them to poles of some kind, detach the solar panel staking it in the ground and you're good to go. That detachable panel has 4 feet of cord and comes with its own stake to penetrate the ground (as does the light, but it's too short for a decent plant and needs to be attached to a pole). Enjoy!!!! P.S. The pictures aren't mine nor have I acquired any of these yet myself so please don't ask me any questions about my personal experience with these things.
70 lumens of probably the wrong spectrum. Being a 23 watt cfl is 1600 lumen and you would need atleast four 23 watt CFLs, totaling 6400 lumens for a decent grow.....or you could use 91.4, lets say an even 91 of those junk ass lights to get 6400 lumens of probably the complete wrong spectrum....lol I'll pass I think it would be cheaper to pay for the four CFLs to grow.....91 of those at $43 a piece would be just under $4000.....I know I could pay my light bill with that
The guy who told me shows in the picture that three of them is just enough to maintain vegetative growth as I can personally guarantee that the size of the plant in the picture is impossible to achieve during out of season light levels. Remember: This is not about supplying the plant/s with their primary source of light. This is supplemental lighting to polish off what the sun isn't finishing just enough to maintain a vegetative state until it is time for flower, when you can leave it all to the sun. But thank you for that information. Unfortunately I cannot do much in the way of CFLs, though I will experiment with what I can get done with only one light socket quite possibly. The problem is overloading light sockets as there's only two out there and my garden has a capacity of 7 plants (all within my legal rights). I'll see what I can do with just two.
Those lights had zero to do with polishing off anything the sun couldn't do. A couple of them lights had zero to do with the size if that plant....they couldn't cause anything to grow
Haha is it the 1st of April already ? Those lights will barely give off enough light to stop the plants from going it to flower. The money that it costs to buy them could run a proper light indoors for a month or two. You still need the sun to be bright enough to grow plants and the weather warm enough to allow them to grow. What about all the snow I have on the ground? What about the fact that if I put a plant outside now it would be frozen solid in a couple of hours and fall to a pile of mush when the temperature next goes above freezing A better idea would be to set up a couple of 20w CFLs. They only cost a couple of bucks each and give off 1200 lumens each. Because they only draw 20watts you will unlikely notice any increase in electricity consumption
I'm afraid all that light, and four others like it, would provide is a lighted view to my plants slowly dying.
You do realise there are 9 very small plants in that photo right? The 3 at the front are on the brink of death. These garden twickle lights give off 70 lumens, it's basically nothing. No growth will occur from these lights. If you are able to grow plants in your climate during winter you would be better off just letting them flower. They have to be 3-4 weeks old to flower anyway. These lights may prolong veg, maybe, but why bother? They are certainly not worth the money, they won't add to any growth
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction guys. I guess $40 solar lights just aren't going to cut it. Also the solar and plug-in generators are super-expensive.. twice or more the cost of a good gas generator, which is out of the question. I'm now looking at outdoor 20 watt LEDs as those are so energy efficient that I think I can do it.
No, sir. I live where we make little distinction between differing seasons (southern California). I've decided that LED's are too expensive for me so I found some $5 75 watt equivalent outdoor CFL bulbs that I'm going to buy. Edit: Update: This is the right bulb for me. http://www.bulbs.com/espec.aspx?ID=16561&RefId=43
I wish you luck, but a single 400 watt metal halide bulb would serve your purposes much better and with ballast, they aren't that much really.