JANSJÖ LED work lamp - black - IKEA Trying to grow outdoors but the seedling is very small and growing slow so I'm wonder if this lamp is any good to speed up growing indoors and then eventually put the plant outside in a few weeks? It's the only lamp I have at my place. From the site: Luminous flux: 70 Lumen Power: 2.0 W Light color; warm white (3000 Kelvin). Built-in LED light source.
True, but I've put the lamp only a few inches away from the seedling, and surrounded it very closely with a foil barrier only a couple inches from the plant, all the way around in a circle. So the plant at least looks like it's very well lit up at the moment.
I grow with low wattage lighting...and I'd say 2watts is barely enough to sprout a plant (actually a plant will sprout without light)...and the light would have to be like 4" away...kinda pointless really. You probably have a better light bulb in the ceiling fixture in your room..
The thing is that lamp is sort of a spotlight LED so if it shines directly in your eye it's very bright but it doesn't have a great spread of light, it's just concentrated in one small area.. that's why i'm trying it with just one seedling a few inches away.. surrounded by foil, it does look very well lit up.. that seedling is 3 weeks old and tiny. . i saw vids where the seedling has like 6 sets of leaves by now but my one is tiny, hasn't seemed to grow at all for over a week like it's stuck, even though i put it out in daylight for past few weeks. maybe i could just try it for a few days and see if it has any effect..
lol use it if you want to. halogens also look super bright to the eye, but wont grow plants...our eyes aren't the best judge cuz pretty much all lights look bright when you look into them.
lol yeah i know what you mean the eye test isnt reliable.. but i got no other lamp plus no budget to buy until payday next month.. i figure if i try it for a day or two and notice a difference, then surely it must be doing something because right now the plant has been stuck same size for over a week. one thing i do have though is some multicolor filter paper for photography, i read somewhere about color spectrum, you think i should put a filter on the light, like so it changes the color to red or blue.. or it wont make any difference?
nah if you filter the light you will be blocking the majority of it...the color of the light needs to come form the filament inside the bulb, not a film or covering. really though a super cheap lampholder and a basic cfl bulb will be good enough for about a month or a foot of growth. If your budget is tight check out thrift stores or garage sales for a little clip on light that can take a 15-25w cfl read through some of the stickys if you're truly interested..there's a ton of info in there to get you started...and there's alot of nice pll here to help
sorry for late reply and thanks for the info... well here's an interesting update.. it's been 4 days straight.. i had the light on for most of the time, turning it off for maybe 8 hours in total but the rest of the time it was on.. noticed the plant has actually grown by about a third of an inch in height, and maybe a tiny bit of width too. but that growth is somehow more in the last few days than about a week and a half prior when it was getting daylight for 12 hours everyday! i had that little light right up close to the plant, only about an inch away, shining right on it... made a cone out of the top of an old plastic bottle, put foil all around the inside and placed it on top of the plant, like a reflective dome with the reflection on the interior.. put the light in the middle of the cone where there was a hole just big enough to fit the small head of the light.. most of the light was contained in that cone.. pretty amazed the plant has grown but is it a trick of the eye.. maybe it's just stretching towards the light, rather than actually growing in a beneficial way?