Makeshift hop growlight

Lol... so I got thinkin about my EKG rhizome that I planted about a month ago. I realize it was a little late to plant but this year should be mainly root development. Anyways, I came up with a brilliant way to light that sucker up 24/7!! HAH! I live on the 2nd floor of my apartment building, and there are building "saftey flood lights" that are supposed to used to illuminate the sidewalk. The landlord pays the electric on that sucker. Well, I sorta borrowed one, pointed it on my deck where my little 1ft tall 1st year EKG rhizome is growing! Free night time light! Penny's tomato, cilantro, and basil should kick arse too! :rockin::rockin:

Will plants benefit from 24/7 sunlight? I'm sure you know better then me just curious if you were serious. If so, awesome lol.

From what I understand, after the plant has an established root system and has started to produce leaves, it can get 18-24 hours of light. When you want the plant to flower, reduce the light to 12 hours a day. SO I'm thinkin i'll leave the light on it for a good month or two and see how fast it grows, then move the light back down on the sidewalk.

Did you put one of those special plant bulbs in it? Otherwise I dont think it will make much of a difference. Sunlight and lightbulbs arent the same thing.

clemson55 said:

Did you put one of those special plant bulbs in it? Otherwise I dont think it will make much of a difference. Sunlight and lightbulbs arent the same thing.

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They need UV right?

Plants need a mix of red and blue light wavelengths. Incandescents are good for red, fluorescents are good for blue. This is supplemental lighting so it doesn't matter if you don't have the complete spectrum from the supplemental light. They will still do photosynthesis. All the special bulbs do is help to keep the plants from getting too leggy. I personally don't like them because while they put out a good spectrum, they put out less total light and are $$. I prefer a mix of cool and warm fluorescents and one incandescent for growing plants under lights. Most plants will grow just fine with 24 hrs of light. Lots of the monster vegetables that are grown in Alaska are because of the very long days so the plants can do more photosynthesis. You won't need to change the light for flower formation - hops like long days. Now if you are growing poinsettias, those wouldn't flower.


Now if it were cacti, they like some night. They've adapted to do half of photosyntesis during the day (the energy collecting part) and then the other half at dark (carbon fixation). This way they can open the stomata at night, not during the day to get CO2 and minimize the water that is lost in the process. CO2 goes in, water goes out, there is no way around it

pjj2ba said:

All the special bulbs do is help to keep the plants from getting too leggy.

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Light intensity will keep the plants from stretching. I seriously doubt the plants will get any help from a street light.

You can get flourescents in both red and blue wavelenghts. They're called warm white and cool white. I don't know if I agree about incandescent bulbs having any use. You can use metal halide or high pressure sodium if you want some real light horsepower but I don't think an ordinary household incandescent has the right wavelength or enough intensity to do any good. You'd have to have the bulb so close to the plant that you'd burn it to get even the smallest effect. As it is, the flourescents need to be right on top of the plant to keep it from stretching.

Fingers said:

You'd have to have the bulb so close to the plant that you'd burn it to get even the smallest effect. As it is, the flourescents need to be right on top of the plant to keep it from stretching.

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+1.

Also, flowering/fruiting plants have different light spectrum/intensity requirements. Flowering plants need very intense light. Flourescents/incandescents wont's do the trick here.

You also have to consider that these hops are outside. So for 11-12 hours a day they are getting direct sunlight and as soon as it goes dusk the floods come on. The rules are a little bit different than an indoor grow situation. Also, I'm not paying the electric on this light, nor can I change or move the fixture other than where its pointed.

Those outdoor lights lose intensity at an exponential rate. They are worthless for growlights. Your plants may know that they are there, but they won't be helpful. A good dark cycle where plants change their 'breathing cycle' is a better way to grow.

yeppers, you need to be within 12" I believe for the light to do anything beneficial to the plants.


Dont ask me how I know this please

Fingers said:

I don't know if I agree about incandescent bulbs having any use. You can use metal halide or high pressure sodium if you want some real light horsepower but I don't think an ordinary household incandescent has the right wavelength or enough intensity to do any good. You'd have to have the bulb so close to the plant that you'd burn it to get even the smallest effect. As it is, the flourescents need to be right on top of the plant to keep it from stretching.

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Incandescents have plenty of intensity. In this regard they are much better than fluorescents. The problem is they lack any blue light. Plant will photosynthesize quite happily under incandescent lights. Photosynthesis will be more efficient if blue light is added, but it is not necessary - for photosynthesis to occur. The problem is that blue light is VERY important for signalling. Cryptochromes (blue light receptors) act to mediate photomorphogenetic responses such as inhibition of stem elongation, stimulation of leaf expansion, control of photoperiodic
flowering, and setting of the circadian clock. This is why plants get leggy under incandescent lights. They can make plenty of food, but their development is all messed up. With fluorescents the big problem (assuming a mix of warm and cool bulbs for a full spectrum) is lack of intensity as the bulbs just don't put out enough light so they have to be very close.

At only 1 ft tall, you probably won't see much benefit. When the plant gets taller it might help a little.

sirsloop said:

You also have to consider that these hops are outside. So for 11-12 hours a day they are getting direct sunlight and as soon as it goes dusk the floods come on. The rules are a little bit different than an indoor grow situation. Also, I'm not paying the electric on this light, nor can I change or move the fixture other than where its pointed.

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I dont think any of that has to do with the fact that the floodlight is going to have little or no growth effect on the plant.

pjj2ba said:

Incandescents have plenty of intensity. In this regard they are much better than fluorescents.

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They are more intense as a point source of light, but keep in mind that watt for watt you get more light from flourescents than you do from incandescents. I'll agree with the light spectrum argument you present as the source for stretched plants but not with the intensity argument.

If you take a 100W incandescent light bulb from your house, only a portion of that energy is converted into light. The remainder is converted to heat. The more heat a bulb gives off the less efficient it is at delivering its light load. So the actual light getting to the plants is much less than the 100W you're delivering. Sure, the plant will undergo photosynthesis, but it will be weak and insufficient because there just isn't enough actual light energy reaching the plant in any spectrum.

So with an incandescent bulb you're losing energy to heat and losing energy to an unusable spectrum of light. Flourescents convert electrical energy to luminosity more efficiently than incandescents. That's why they don't get as hot and you use a lower wattage flourescent to get the same effect and the old incandescents. 100W true watts of flourescent load is cooler and brighter than 100W of incandescent load. The flourescents also deliver more useable spectrum. You'd be better off using a series of compact flourescents surrounding the plant rather than the same wattage of incandescent not only for spectrum, but for intensity as well.

Fingers said:

They are more intense as a point source of light, but keep in mind that watt for watt you get more light from flourescents than you do from incandescents.

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NO argument here on this, fluorescents are way more effiecient for the amount of light they put out. If I put up incandescents in place of my fluorescents though, I could cram a lot more in and get a lot more light in my plant growing area, and I'm sure I could find some blue LEDs to help out with the spectrum. However it would be a lot more $$$ in energy and terribly inefficient. The fancy metal halide lights put out a good spectrum and loads of light, but they also put out a whole lot of heat and are $$.

Hopefully in a couple of years I'll be able to replace my fluorescent lights with LEDs, but they are still a little too pricey. Many of the new growth chambers for plants use this technology, but that is way too pricey and would look really ugly in my house

Yeah, umm, it's like this.

For vegetative growth, you want 'blue' light. Fluorescents are excellent, but must be close to the plant.

For flowering, you want 'red' light as in high pressure sodium, which must also be quite close.

Anything more than 18 hours of light is not desirable-may not be detrimental, but not of sufficient value to do-especially if you are paying for the light. Also, if giving a bunch of extra hours of light, and then taking away that extra light will certainly cause flowering-whether you intended it or not.

On the security side of this issue, bringing attention to your crop with visible extra light can cause someone to want to steal them (yeah, even off the ground floor), or cause a nuisance po-po call to investigate. Thieves do not need to be intelligent enough to discern the difference in your plant's characteristics, to grab them and be gone.

Mercury, halides, incandescents, etc, are just not worth the effort or expense.

Period.

Henry Hill said:

Also, if giving a bunch of extra hours of light, and then taking away that extra light will certainly cause flowering-whether you intended it or not.

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This depends on the plant. Many don't care at all, they reach a certain age/size and they flower, regardless of the # of hrs of light (day-neutral - ie. tomatoes, soybeans) If given less than ideal light, they will still flower, it just will take them longer to get big enough to flower.

Other plants have a strict requirement for short nights. Many of these plant will NEVER flower, no matter how big or old they are until they receive a short enough night. These plant will still flower under 24 hrs of light. The important flowering time keeper in plants (phytochrome) gets converted to the active form by red light during the day, and slowly spontaneously converts to the inactive form at night. By measure the ratio of these two forms, the plant knows when to flower. This is how the flowering clock works. They have other clocks for other things. Short night plants (like hops) need low levels of the inactive form to flower.

The other class is the long day plants (poinsettias, Xmas cactus). These plants will never flower no matter how big or old they are until they receive a long enough night time. These plants need to have lots of the inactive form present first thing in the morning to flower. If you grow these under long days, dropping the light still might not get then to flower, even with a 6 hr change. You must get below the critical limt for them to flower (it varies from plant to plant).

Now if you can get yourself ahold of a good far-red (690 nm) light source, with no red light (660) you can cheat for long night plants. Besides slowly converting to the inactive for at night, you can switch it very quickly by shining far-red light on the plants (avoiding any red which would defeat the purpose). In affect, one could artificially imitate a long night. In the past it was hard to find good filters that would block out just one or the other wavelength. Now there are LEDs available in those two specific wavelengths so one can really mess with plants.

I don't use lights on my hops. I use lights on my large houseplant collection

As far as lights go you want Metal Halide bulb for veg growth and you want an HPS for flowering.

Incandescent and fluorescents actually cost more to run because a Metal Halide or HPS bulbs will put out more lumens then an incandescent or fluorescent bulb of the same wattage.

That is why MH and HPS are more expensive, but they are far better and have a descently long lifespan.

As far as using a floodlight to supplement your hops, it would depend on what type of bulb is in the light. If it is a MH, which some are, you wouldn't want it a foot away because it would burn your plant.

I mean I would not use the light at all. Just keep them outside as long as you can and if you need to bring them inside because it gets cold, then you can worry about a light.