There are many benefits to bringing plants indoors or growing vegetables in your home. However, the weak indoor sunlight can not be enough to support photosynthesis. So for the normal growth as in the outdoor environment, you should learn how to use grow lights for indoor plants.
This article will provide beginners with straight-to-the-point instructions. Check it out, and you are good to go.
Why Use Grow Lights for Your Plants?
As mentioned, the indoor environment can not provide your plants with enough sunlight in most cases. So you should need an indoor light system to compensate for the sunlight’s shortage.
Plants grown in solarium or greenhouse still need growth lights because the sunlight will decrease, leading to poor growth.
During the long-lasting winter days, the indoor light system is helpful for the plants, especially for those that need intense light levels.
Moreover, indoor light plays an important role in accelerating the seeding process, creating stronger young plants to grow.
It can also be a great decorative item for your house; for example, an illuminated tree located at the corner is a perfect highlight for your home at night.
How To Use Grow Lights For Indoor Plants?
There are only two types of light mostly absorbed by the plants – blue and red light. While blue light plays an important role in making the tree grow, the red light helps accelerate your plants’ flowering process.
In the current market, there are many types of grow light. However, we recommend you use T5 HO tubes. These tubes could produce both red and blue light; they are the most suitable type for your indoor plants’ growth and flowering.
How to use grow lights for indoor plants
Speaking of the installation, at best you should suspend the lights approximately 60cm above the plants. Similarly, when using growth lights to promote the seeds, it would help if you placed the lights above the seedlings 60cm.
When completing the installation, you may wonder “how many hours a day should I turn on the lights?”. Well, it depends on the kind of plants that you are growing. We recommend that you should leave the lights on for about 14 to 18 hours per day for its best development.
Don’t leave the lights the whole day; it doesn’t make your plants grow more quickly. Leave the plants in darkness at least 6 hours per day for its best growth.
To ensure that the plants get enough light every day in case your light doesn’t have a timer; you should set a reminder on your phone.
How To Tell If Your Indoor Plant Isn’t Getting Enough Light?
How to tell if your indoor plant isn’t getting enough light
The leaf colour is a good signal to know whether your plants have enough light or not. Normally, the mid-green leave colour shows that the intensity of the lights is correct.
When seeing the leaves is dark green together with the plants growing poorly, the plants do not receive enough light. You should fix the problem by moving the lights closer to the plants, besides, if your plants have some symptoms such as bleached colour, poor growth. Additionally, the leaves near the lights become yellow-green. This means the plants are suffering too high intensity of light.
Then it would be best if you immediately lowered the intensity by decreasing the number of light tubes. Or you can lengthen the distance between the leaves and the lights.
Final Words
After reading this article, you have learned how to use grow lights for indoor plants. Using indoor lights is not too complicated if you master all the steps. However, you will need some practice in order to become an expert in this area.
Thank you for your time!