Light is a vital ingredient to plants growth. When we are trying to grow houseplants indoors in our home, but you may notice that in your house may lack natural light which is crucial for plants. But now a day, you can grow plants indoors in your house using artificial light. Every plant doesn’t need a lot of light. So, at first, know the requirements of the plants and place them accordingly. For indoor gardeners using artificial light is very popular and now we share with you how to grow houseplants in artificial light.
How to grow houseplant in artificial light:
What is artificial light: there are many indoor plants thrive in artificial light. The fluorescent tube is inexpensive than another artificial light and most effective. Set up the light carefully and place the plants 6-15 inches away from the light sources. Depending on your indoor plants keep your lights on at least 16 hours of a day. For flowering plant, if they didn’t get enough light they may don’t bloom or bud. For foliage plants, need more light to look faded or ghostly. Using more powerful tubes and lights to increase the light redundance or keep the light on for long times, use reflectors keep the tube together and place the plants closer to the lights.
Types of artificial light: for seriously starting indoor planting from the seeds you need a different type of tube fixtures and placed it in their right position over the plants and seeds. You can buy a special light kit for your plants which included reflector and fixtures. Buying light kits is not necessary for a regular houseplant, you can use any light for them but set up the light in a right position from where your plants will be more beneficial from it. In your local market you find a different type of artificial lights for example:
- Fluorescent light: this is the economical and most popular choices for houseplants. Fluorescent bulb is cool enough so that you come closer your plants to the bulbs. For best result place this light at least one foot away from the plants.
- Incandescent lights: for your plants give off a lot of heat. Especially this encourages your plant’s bloom. You can also use these two types of lights.
- Halides: generally, halides are using for larger plants and larger spaces. It’s cover more areas, so, you don’t need thousand watt light. The smaller halide is better than thousand-watt light. Don’t forget that plant also needs darkness. Every plant prefers darkness for few hours though they can grow well under the continuous light. Every day run on your light for 12-18 hours.
- Compact fluorescent light: without using T5 system compact fluorescent light are the best choice and very effective for indoor plants. It is also less inexpensive than incandescent light. To be sure what kind of artificial light will be better for the indoor plants you can talk to an expert. All plants don’t require same things. For example, some plants grow well under the shadow, some are needs 5-6 hours light every day, and some need 16-18 hours of light every day. So, place the same kind of plants in the same space.
What kind of artificial light you choose it fully depends on your choices and your plant’s requirements. We just discuss how to grow houseplants in artificial light but on which you prefer for your plants it’s your own choice.