On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:30:14 -0800 (PST), Mea505
wrote:

Hello all:

I am a relatively new member of this group, and I looked over the most
recent messages before I decided to write this post. I have a question
dealing, specifically, with the general 'household plant," and the
degree of sunlight that is warranted for such plants.

Question: Is there a means by which one can identify those plants that
require varying degrees of sunlight? Is there a mean of relating this
to the type of leaf, for example? And, if this is true, is it also
true that the typical "household plant" lights that one sees in local
stores are almost as effective as natural sunlight? If the answer is
"yes," or "perhaps," then would it be normal to think that one should
use such a light during the normal "rise and fall" of the sun
throughout the day, for example, during those days and weeks of little
to no sunlight for various reasons.

Thanks,

Mark


I think your question is too general, you need to look into the
specific requirements of the particular plants you are trying to grow.

Sanseveria needs very little light, radishes need a lot. African
violets, somewhere in between.

Most of my reading lately has been for aquarium plants, they do well
with fluorescent lights.

Plants, in general, need mostly red and some blue colors in the
spectrum, the "Gro-lux" tube is designed to provide these. A problem
I had with them, they just don't look the way I wanted things to look.

Some time ago the standard recommendation was a combination of cool
white and warm white bulbs. I also remember somewhere on the web
reading that in a particular trial cool white was as good as anything.

It takes a lot of light to equal the sun light for intensity, mostly
plants selected for growing indoors are low light plants, many would
burn if put outdoors in full sun. Most are also tropical plants,
which are day-neutral, that is not affected much by the length of
light period. I'd start with 12 hours, see how that works.