Euphorbias & Pachypodiums
birdsnblooms
13 years ago
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amccour
13 years agolast modified: 9 years agocactusmcharris, interior BC Z4/5
13 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
WANTED: euphorbias and pachypodium
Comments (2)Have a new Euphorbia. This one looks like a Huernia, starfish shaped with central rosettes. It has a larger central rosette and 3 new plantlets forming. Its a hybrid, if you are interested in one of the new rosettes, I'll give you the details of the grower who developed it. Also got an E albertensis from her but that one cannot be divided. Nick...See MoreSome new fatties
Comments (1)What a great gift. Grow them well, Norma...See MoreWhich plants stay inside for the Summer?
Comments (7)Yeah, don't forget the RAIN..., they love that too! I really did not believe there was a difference but the two previous summers we were in rather bad drought (from Ma. into LI, N.J. an Pa.), boy did I see a difference in lushness with just the heat but NO RAIN (despite my constant hosing!) This year, much more humid and drought definitely OVER! P.S., Red Philos are gorgeous. Congo Red is one of my favorites...See MoreBest Grow Lights for Large Succulents Indoors
Comments (15)Hey KP, looks like you could use some specifics. I might be able to help a bit. I've been looking into lighting myself and it's a rabbit hole you can lose yourself in. One community I would honestly suggest looking into for lighting is marijuana growing forums. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but that industry has put rocket fuel into the lighting manufacturer world (imo). Here's a great summary of the basics written by user: Rennet on succulents subreddit: The thing about artificial lighting for plants is that just about any sort of white light will work. It doesn't matter if it's an LED, a compact, T5 or T8 fluorescent, or even an old school high pressure sodium or metal halide lamp, the light just has to produce enough photosynthetically active photons to meet the needs of your plant. That said, for the sake of efficiency, I'd recommend you look for high CRI white LEDs with a colour temperature around 3500-5000K. The type and quantity of light that you use to grow your plants with all depends on what you're growing and what sort of area you're growing in. Roughly though, for a plant that requires full sunlight, you're going to be aiming for around 30-50 W (actual power draw, not "equivalent wattage") of white LEDs per square foot at a distance of about 12-18" above your plant, kept on for 12-16 hours per day. Here is a more detailed explanation of how plant light requirements work: When using artificial light for growing plants, there are only three basic things that matter. Light output. Specifically, the photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) output of the light: This is measured in Photosynthetic Photon Flux (PPF), or the number of micromoles (umol) of photons between 400 and 700 nm emitted by the source every second (umol/s). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetically_active_radiation Distance, or how far away the light source is from your plants. Since light intensity drops off exponentially with distance away from the source., moving either the light or the plants has a significant effect on how much light is available. Photoperiod, or the number of hours each day the light stays on. The longer the light stays on each day, the more photons it emits, and the more photons strike your plant. Generally you want the photoperiod to be in the 12-16 hour range, although it's possible for plants to tolerate 24 hour photoperiods. What you definitely don't want though, is to blast your plants with a full day's worth of light in a very short period of time. Points 1 and 2 above (light output and distance) can be combined into a metric called the Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD). This is a measure of how many micromoles of PAR photons hit an area of a square meter every second (umol/m^2 s). PPFD can be increased by either increasing light output at the source or decreasing distance between the source and your plants. When PPFD is combined with point 3 (photoperiod) we get the most important metric summarizing light availability: the daily light integral, or DLI This number represents the number of moles of PAR photons that hit an area of a square meter over the course of 24 hours (mol/m^2 day). Basically, this is how much light is available to a plant growing in a specific location each day. Different plants have different DLI requirements, and by tailoring your lighting setup to meet the DLI requirements of what you want to grow, you greatly increase your chances of successfully growing whatever it is you want. Here's an example of a lighting setup using a quantum board light fixture: Most reputable grow light manufacturers will include a specification sheet with metrics such as PAR and PPFD at a given distance away from the light. We'll use this spec sheet as an example: https://i.imgur.com/MRdi7pW.png This sheet shows that the light generates a PPFD of about 900 umol/m^2 s for the 2' x 2' area below it when measured at a distance of 40 cm. The sheet also shows that increasing the distance to 60 cm above the growing area surface reduces the PPFD to around 600. Using a calculator such as this (link) we can see that if we keep this light on for 12 hours a day, we generate a DLI of approximately 25. We can then refer to a DLI chart such as this one (link), and see if whatever plant you're growing is getting enough light. If for example, we wanted to grow something like a Spathiphyllum, which prefers DLIs in the 4-10 range, we can see that the above light is a bit too bright, so we have a couple options: Reduce the brightness of the light (decrease PPF) Keep the light the same brightness, but move the light away (decrease PPFD) Keep the light on for fewer hours (decrease photoperiod, note that this option isn't preferred, since high light intensity would still risk burning the plant) Any combination of the above results in a reduction of DLI, so you would adjust things as needed to achieve your desired lighting conditions. We would do the opposite of the above if we needed a higher DLI (30+) for plants that require full sun. You can roughly estimate the PPFD and DLI of your growing area using the light meter on your phone if you download a light meter app. This is useful if the artificial light you're using doesn't have PPFD specs listed. Just take the brightness readout in lux, and plug it into a calculator like this one (link). Keep in mind that this results in a very rough estimate since phone light meters are 1. not particularly accurate in the first place, and 2. read out in lux, which is weighted for perceived brightness in human vision. Afterwards you can convert PPFD to DLI based on how long the growing area is illuminated each day to see if your plants are getting enough light. End I also have chatted with another user who suggested looking into the led boards but on Aliexpress as opposed to Amazon. Same lights, same chips, same boards, just without the company stamp and it takes about a month for shipping. I would highly recommend getting leds, even if they're just 2-4ft led strip lights from somone like Barrina or Parmida. I know, you've got tall plants, so another thing you can do is get some floodlights and retrofit them with the led lights and chips yourself. I have a walkthrough from someone on that and I'll try to remember to link it tomorrow....See Morebirdsnblooms
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kaktuskris
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