Help-LED grow lights to support bird of paradise moved inside?

8 years ago

last modified: 8 years ago

Last fall, I bought/potted an amazing white bird of paradise as an "accent" for my dining room. Unfortunately, I failed to think about the fact that the trees outside had no leaves at the time, and that sunlight would be greatly reduced in the spring...

dining room · More Info

When the outside trees' leaves came in, I had to move it onto my front step for more light, where it has been very happy. Through the summer, it got early direct sunlight and diffuse sun the rest of the day. It has more than doubled in size.

As nights got down into the 50s, about two weeks ago, I moved it inside, However, my "suniest" window doesn't seem to be sunny enough. As you hopefully can see, the most recent new leaf is looking decidedly pale (center of plant, partly curled).

I'm pretty sure I need to supplemental the light for a while. Until the trees outside shed their leaves, and I can move it to it's "winter" location in the dining room.

I made the mistake of looking on Amazon for "grow lights" and Oh. My. Gosh. The variations available!! LED is what I'd prefer to get, because they don't get as hot. But what wattage? What type? Lots of "hydroponic" grow lights. They're purple? Is that beneficial? Will a "regular" LED light do anything? I've got an adjustable floor lamp I can put the bulb in, to aim it at the plant. Just need to know what is the best bulb to get.

Thanks!

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Rebecca Willcutt

3 years ago

last modified: 3 years ago

First of all, the snarky comment from Arunski about shoulda coulda was unnecessary --who says something like that? I love plants and I'm pretty good at growing them, but sometimes we plant lovers see a plant and buy it, not really knowing that much about it. I bought a white bird of paradise summer 2019 from Home Depot because I loved the look of it. It was about 2 feet tall. Planted on my covered porch in a beautiful pot and it grew unbelievably over the summer. I had to bring it inside for the winter and it has continued to grow in a corner that has a window, but it is extremely filtered light from plants outside. I purchased a cheap LED floor lamp from Amazon that I can bend to whatever position and the plant seems to love it, even though 2 feet of it are above the lamp. Watering has been limited due to spillage issues, and still it grows. It's about 6 feet tall now with new growth all the time. I had no idea it would get this big, but I have 4 more feet to go before I have to move it so we will see what happens. I could move it back on the porch, but it has grown too big to move I think and everyone who walks in the door has a fit over it. I think I will buy a nice self watering planter and see if that helps. I've only fertilized it twice. Who knows? Maybe it knows it's loved and likes the home it lives in. We have a good vibe.

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Comments (22)

aruzinsky
8 years ago
Assuming good growing conditions, what do you propose doing when the plant is 25 feet high? Keeping it small and healthy looking is a little like wanting your cake and eating it too. For similar shape and aesthetics, you could have bought a dieffenbachia, instead. Even a regular bird of paradise, strelitzia reginae, would have been a better choice as a house plant.

If I were you, I would be satisfied with just keeping it alive until it can be moved outdoors in the Spring. Then I would let it grow in the ground and let it die there next Autumn.
Pam Fisher
Original Author
8 years ago
Thank you so much for your advice. Did you have an answer to my question about supplemental lighting through the fall?
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I don’t use much fertilizer so I can exclude chemical burn. Did you know your plants can suffer from fertilizer burn, the malady, even if you have never fertilized? Solutions with a low concentration of dissolved solids/salts move to an area with a higher concentration of dissolved solids until isotonicity (balance) is reached. You might remember the process of osmosis from biology. Water in the soil solution normally moves into cells through the semi-permeable cell membrane until the level of solutes in bound water (water inside of the cells) is the same as the level of solutes in the soil solution. The technical name for fertilizer burn is plasmolysis, and it occurs when the level of dissolved solids in the soil solution rises to a point higher than the level of solutes in bound water (water inside of cell walls). 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Pam Fisher
Original Author
8 years ago
...if ithis plant should reach such tremendous proportions, I can trim it back. But there IS plenty of available height in the living room.
cptcosmos
8 years ago
Sorry I originally posted this to the wrong thread..

I use LED lights to grow veggies in the
basement.. but I don't think they are an appropriate choice for your
situation. The lights sold to thread into a normal outlet are not very
useful, and the specialty systems while effective are not inexpensive
and give off a rather eye twisting purple/pink light. I can't stress
enough how distracting the light is, I would not have it in any room I
used for anything else. You could, if you are handy, make your own LED
fixture using mostly white chips but that can be a pain.

In all honesty for what you want to do I would recommend something
like the 26W or 55W SunBlaster CFL. Before switching to LED's I used
these with great success. Your plant is large so I would expect you to
need at least 2 26Watt bulbs and reflectors. Turn them on in the
evening(afternoon) just before sunset and leave them on long enough to
give the plant 12-14 hours of total light.

Ideally though I would get a minimum of 2 = 3 Foot SHO T5 bulbs and hang them vertically in the window to mimic the direction of the natural light.

http://www.sunblasterlighting.com/
Common Cents
8 years ago
Much of what @cptcosmos wrote about LED lighting is true.

However, the ones built to fit into a standard fixture socket might work for your specific situation. If you're trying to grow a room full of veggies, most of those are too narrowly focused. But if you're trying to light up a single house plant in a single planter pot, they can do really good for that application.

I'm currently using a couple of these 18W ABI units over some 16" planter pots (one with tomatoes in it, and one with star Jasmine). When placed 3 to 4 feet above the planter pots, one provides enough light focused on the plant in the pot, and there isn't much light "spilling" out into the room.

The light is still pinkish purple, but the ABI ones have some white LED's in the mix as well. It's mildly funny looking, but not eye-twistingly garish like the pure red-blue LED grow light.

I'm actually waiting on one of this other "full spectrum" type to arrive. I can't say much about that one from actual experience, but from the information in the listing on Amazon, it has potential as well. I have bought other LED lights from that seller on Amazon, and the quality of the other units seems quite good.
aruzinsky
8 years ago
Common Cents, don't be fooled. Check the power consumption of your LED lamps with a watt meter. I have a similar "27W" lamp that, in fact, uses 4.5 watts of power. It isn't bad for 4.5 watts, but, I wouldn't have bought it for $17 had I known.
Common Cents
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
I know about that, @aruzinsky.

The ABI one actually draws almost 20W from the wall socket. And their "12W" unit actually draws almost 15W from the wall. The ABI 18W unit has 18 LED's, and it runs quite a bit warmer than a 12 LED, 12W unit from them. And it's a lot brighter. They claim 1400-1500 lumens, and I have no reason to doubt that claim. It's a lot brighter than any incandescent or halogen reflector bulb I have up to 150W.

I bought a "24W" LED unit from another vendor, and that one looks and performs identical to the ABI 12W unit, same number of LED's, same housing (probably from the same source in China), same power draw and same operating temperature after running for a few hours. So there are vendors out there misrepresenting their products.

Actually, the second "full spectrum" one I linked to claims to draw 20W from the wall in the fine print in the specs on that listing. My other experience with the seller "evergotek" on Amazon is that their products perform well. The little MR16 bulbs I got from them are really, really bright for 6W. I'm using some for seed starting and seedlings. It's a much wider beam, and the thing was so bright that you can't really look directly at it. I really wanted to see if all of the LED's visible when it's powered off were making light, and I had to wear my welder's mask to look at the thing directly. It's that bright.

A lot of times, the fine print shows "Power consumption" or "power draw" which the sketchy sellers will claim as "full disclosure" of the actual power when they make exaggerated claims, like this "24W" one that is actually only 12W.
aruzinsky
8 years ago
Thank you, Common Sense. I just now ordered a 4-pack of Evergotek's MR16 bulbs,

http://www.amazon.com/4-Pack-Greenhouse-Hydroponic-Cultivation-Install/dp/B010NV14Z0

mostly because I was impressed with its power spectral density chart:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51gCYrPUs5L.SL1000.jpg
rooftopbklyn (zone 7a)
8 years ago
I don't know much about the plant in question not having grown it, but if you are OK not trying to make it flower while indoors, I would recommend getting cheap fixtures of any sort that can take big bulbs, and the large size (I think they are 65 watt) CFL twisty bulbs in the closest you can get to 6500K. Buy a bulb first (they're cheap) so you can prepared for what the fixture needs to accommodate, they are bigger than incandescent bulbs but use the same socket.

The bulbs I mean consume 65 watts, they are not "65 watt equivalent" as compared to incandescent.

a few of those should keep your plant looking nice for the winter and may be much cheaper than fancy grow lights.

You need to worry about fancy and all those weird numbers and stats if you are trying to produce fruit/flowers, otherwise 6500K twisty fluorescent (CFL) bulbs are a great bang for buck and plants love them, and you can use any old light fixture you like.
Common Cents
8 years ago
re: aruzinsky

> Thank you, Common Sense. I just now ordered a 4-pack of Evergotek's MR16 bulbs,

I bought two of those lights. Small, but very bright, and very wide angle output. So, they cover a wide area from up close. I have mine over some seeds I'm starting, and both are over a 2 ft by 1 foot area, overlapping to provide brighter total light and minimize shadows.

The box not only lists 6 LED's and 6W power consumption, it actually says 3 of the LED's are 660nm, 1 is 630nm, 1 at 610nm and the last 1 is 460nm. Hence the spectral curve you linked.

I can tell you the ones I got, three LED's are the same color and the other three all look a bit different. It's hard to tell the exact color because the filter on my welders mask messes with the color. It's way to much brightness from a very tiny area to look at it directly with my naked eyes.

The box also says "rated lifetime" is 35,000 hours, and Evergotek on Amazon only claims 25,000.
aruzinsky
8 years ago
"I can tell you the ones I got, three LED's are the same color and the other three all look a bit different."

The blue LED should look very different and the 660 nm LEDs should look about 1/9th as bright as the 610 nm LED. With only one blue LED, the area under the blue portion of the power spectral density curve should be 1/5th the area under the red portion but, it is about half, which is suspicious. I'll sort it out when I get them. It's a shame that similar MR16 bulbs aren't available in individual colors because it's easy enough for the user to mix different color bulbs.

I intend use these MR16 bulbs to replace a few of the 8.5W, 2700K bulbs in my growth chamber for starting seedlings next Spring to see whether they make a difference:

http://www.general-cathexis.com/images/LED1.jpg
http://www.general-cathexis.com/images/LED2.jpg
http://www.general-cathexis.com/images/LED3.jpg
aruzinsky
8 years ago
Common Sense, I received the MR16 bulbs today. I measured the power consumption with a watt meter and it was 4.9 watts when cold and 4.3 watts when cold. Since the advertised description was "*Power Consumption:7W," I am sending them back for a refund.

"The ABI one actually draws almost 20W from the wall socket. And their "12W" unit actually draws almost 15W from the wall. The ABI 18W unit has 18 LED's, and it runs quite a bit warmer than a 12 LED, 12W unit from them. "

Did you measure this with a watt meter?
Common Cents
8 years ago
> Did you measure this with a watt meter?

Actually, I took several bulbs to a friend who is an electrician. He has a device that plugs in the wall, and you plug things into it and the digital readout shows how many watts are being used.

I had those MR16 bulbs, and they showed 5.7 or 5.8 watts. The box and the listing I bought them from claimed 6 watts, which is pretty close. I didn't leave them on for long, just one check when they first turned on. I had another 5 LED, more focused "10W" unit which was the other 5.x number (5.8 or 5.7).

The other bulbs, the "12W" one from ABI was 14.8 watts on his device. The "24W" from Apollo was identical at 14.8 watts, and the "18W" ABI was 19.6 watts on his test device.

Really, I care more about the light output and how my plants grow. Too little light and I get "stretchy" growth, and I don't want that. I'm using those MR16 bulbs over some seeds/seedlings, and for the small area I'm covering, they seem to be working for me.
aruzinsky
8 years ago
That "device" is inexpensive and one of the best investments that you can make. I bought my P3 International Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor, Model P4400.01, for $20 at Menards.
Robert Wainblat III
5 years ago
Pam, any updates since 2015? I'm in the same situation where there's not enough light IMO in my living room and would like to help the Bird of Paradise grow, while also not affecting the ambiance with a purplish red light.
User
5 years ago
Since 2015, LED grow lights have continued to improve. There are many more options now that are white light, instead of the hideous purple. However, cost can still be high for a decent white LED grow light.

If you're interested, look up COB (chip on board) LED grow lights.
PRO
Soltech Solutions
5 years ago
Hi Pam,

Great questions! Hopefully this article should help a little. Best of luck!

https://soltechsolutionsllc.com/best-light-for-growing-plants-indoors/
fdsafasdf dffs
5 years ago
Hello Pam Fisher, I think you need a full spectrum grow light, it means the leds output white light near sunlight. I recommend SANSI LED grow light bulb to you, it's not composed of purple led and blue led. I think 40W is the most proper for your bird of paradise. It's the best seller on Amazon.
Robert Wainblat III
5 years ago
haidayu, funnily enough I just bought some and then googled to see if they'd work for my plants. I got some nice pendant lights to go right above the plants and hide the big ugly white LED bulb :)
bande22
5 years ago
Just bought these lights can’t wait to try them for my BOP
noviceroots
3 years ago
How long do you leave your light on everyday?

Help-LED grow lights to support bird of paradise moved inside?

Rebecca Willcutt

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Help-LED grow lights to support bird of paradise moved inside?

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Pam FisherOriginal Author

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