Pakistan Gardening Forum

salam to all...

new on this forum..and gardening ...unfortunately theres almost no direct sun light in my flat...i read about Grow Lights and thought about giving them a try...does anyone know if grow lights are avail. here?...specifically in KHI...can I use normal tubelights or bulbs?

WSA,

The technical issue is that fluorescent lights do not have a continous spectrum, although they appear white to our eyes, but they emit only certain wavelengths.As a rough statement, chlorophyll absorbs blue and red light, so the illuminating light must have a decent output of blue and red portion of the spectrum. What type of plants you have?

This table might be helpful "Luminous efficiency of various light sources".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grow_light

It also depends on what you are growing. If you are going for ariods like Epipremnum aureum (money plant), peace lily, aglaonema etc then a 45 watt energy saver installed not more than 6 inches above the plant will work..