Why do plants need lighting
Artificial lighting is needed for all plants with a short daylight hours in winter. With an increase in daylight hours, the growth of seedlings is significantly accelerated. At the initial stage of growth, it is necessary to provide 15 hour daylight hours.
Such duration of daylight hours will be enough for seedlings of decorative flowers. In order to make artificial lighting on the windowsill, you can use fluorescent lamps, but it is better to install infrared lamps.
Infrared lamps and diode lighting
Infrared lamps emit a lot of heat, but they glow red. Red light rays are required for seedlings during the active growth stage, when the plant forms leaves.
In order to accelerate the growth of seedlings at the germination stage, set on the windowsill fluorescent lamp and blue diodes.
Blue LEDs stimulate the formation of chlorophyll and plant fiber, which is necessary for the formation of new leaves and regulation of stem growth.
It has been noticed that plants illuminated by blue and red diodes develop much faster than seedlings illuminated by a conventional fluorescent lamp.
How to increase the illumination of the windowsill
In order to increase the performance of a fluorescent lamp, you need to put a reflective surface on the windowsill, for example, polyurethane insulation or foil. Installing a reflective surface has a number of advantages:
- Such a surface reflects not only light from the lamp, but also sunlight, which consists of the entire spectrum of light waves. This allows plants to grow faster when exposed to reflected light.
- Thanks to the reflective surface, the light covers a large area, so the maximum number of plants is illuminated.
- In addition, the foil absorbs heat from the lamp. Thanks to this, the temperature of the soil in the cassettes can be increased by 3-5 ° C. In heated soil, the root system of seedlings develops faster.
In order to install the foil on top of the plants, use a bookcase mount. It is screwed to the wall with hardware. Cardboard and foil are installed on the mount. This structure is screwed onto the bracket.
Plants should receive additional illumination at the same time, so a timer is connected to the lamp, which will turn it on and off automatically.