Please help me with this! I got a Kentia Palm about two and a half months ago from Home Depot. It is about 6 feet tall and came in a 5 gallon bucket which it is still in. Every since I have had it, all of the smaller outer leaves have been slowly turning brown and drying up. I water it as soon as the soil gets dry, and it is in the middle of a room that has a bunch of windows but it is not in direct sunshine. How much water does it need? (oz's) Does it need any direct sunlight? Because it is so tall, the very top leaves are barely grazed by the air from the heating vent, but that doesn't seem to be significant enough to effect it in this way. All the browning leaves are at the bottom of the plant. The leaves are not browning from the tips, but more so overall just slowly turning brown-green then to completely brown. Attached are a couple of pictures. PLEASE HELP! I got this as a very special birthday present, it is a center piece in my living room, and I love this plant very much and want to have it healthy for a long time! Thank you very much :)

Great job! It is a beautiful shade of green that contrasts so well with the deep color of the flower. I wish I could post a photo of my Marie Lorraine plants for you, they are blooming their heads off. It is one of my favorites. It stays compact, but the blooms just get bigger and more of them with each bloom cycle. The color also gets richer and darker. The description says they are supposed to have fantasy markings, Mine don't, they have a wide glitter edge in a deeper shade of the same color, but no fantasy. I grow in natural light, so it probably does not bring out the fantasy the way fluorescent lights do. I am happy with them just as they are. It is also a strong plant, not fussy at all. The hybridizer is no longer with us, so treasure that plant! It is hard to get! I know how to post a photo to an email but I still have not figured out yet how to post to the forum. that will be my next project. Many folks have given instructions, so I will try to do that soon. The photos are saved on my phone. Joanne

Metal halide(MH) is the best. High Pressure Sodium is also excellent. Fluorescent are good but not as powerful- they need to be even closer to the plant(and you need real fluorescent grow lights- not the cheap ones from the hardware store). With any of these, you need blue spectrum bulbs (6k) for plant growth and red spectrum bulbs (around 3k I think) for flowering- when the time is right. With the MH you can now get a single full spectrum bulb that has both growth and flowering spectrum in one. These are expensive systems- especially the MH and HPS. Also, they are intensely bright. I tried the MH system in my living room but it was WAY WAY WAY too bright so I switched it for a fluorescent system with 6 t5 bulbs- much nicer to look at. This website has a good chart for comparisons- good luck. http://www.littlegreenhouse.com/guide3.shtml Here is a link that might be useful: Indoor Plant Grow Light Guide

It depends on the light, actually. For the most part, to be entirely honest (and I'm going to get a lot of argument, screeching, arguing, and people insisting they have a magic formula), it's just not as straightforward as Veg and Bloom. Nature does not work that way. The sun does not suddenly irradiate plants with oodles of blue or red light when it's time to flower or blossom, and indoor plants are no different. The vast majority of plants will want both settings on at most times for maximum energy output if the lamp can handle it and if the plant in question wants it. The Veg setting--depending on your lamp--ramps up the blue (or ramps down the red) by some amount. The flower setting ramps down the blue or ramps up the red. If it's reducing energy overall to below what the plant likes, that's a problem. Keep it at a higher setting overall even if the spectrum is a little too blue/red. If it's over what a plant likes, pull it back. Again, even if it's too blue/red. Note that this isn't usually a problem. And check the species in question. Some are more particular than others, and there are too many indoor crops to count. Most, frankly, simply don't care. What do I use? I use a mixed-spectrum of LEDs of warm whites, full spectrum, mid-white, and red. It covers the output from 395 to 800 nm with no gaps, including the allegedly "useless" yellow and green areas of the spectrum (they're not useless, they've been omitted due to historic reasons that are no longer necessary; plants do use them). The system in the room I'm sitting in has been designed to be not terribly unpleasant to my eye (which is extremely particular in terms of color; I paint in this room; the light has a noticeable red-violet cast to the white, but can be easily overwhelmed by my painting lamps and I've learned to compensate). It's assembled less by spectrum than light strength, and plants do beautifully under this one, the one downstairs, and the less-well designed one in the bathroom (very noticeably red). Flowers get sprouted, and blossom easily, every year under the lights in the cellar. Those are the cheapest fluorescent tubes I can source, 850 plants a year, raised from seed with no other significant light source. Most are budding to blossoming by the time they go outside in May. I just use 1 warm white and 1 cool white per lamp, 2 lamps per shelf, 6 shelves.