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How to use a T5 lighting system to grow beautiful plants
Today I’ve got a welcome guest post from Ben Thorton of T5Fixtures. In the grey weather of British winter, it’s easy to become rather depressed; there is, after all, only so much planning you can do before you need to start getting your fingers back in the soil again. Luckily, modern technology allows us to grow indoors and it’s not as hard, or as expensive, as you might think!
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Gardening is a great hobby because it allows us to relax, to be outdoors and to be one with the nature so to say. However, once the weather gets cold outside usually we need to stop gardening and need to put our hobby on halt. But there is a way you can continue to garden even during the coldest of winters and this way is to start indoor gardening under artificial grow lights, and, more specifically under T5 lighting system.
A T5 grow light system is a tube shaped fluorescent grow light fixture where each of the T5 grow light bulbs are 5 eights of an inch in diameter. This means that not only are these grow lights small and compact, not taking up a lot of space, but they also are very efficient at giving out bright and powerful light but not consuming a lot of watts. So you can say that by using a T5 grow light you have the ability to grow healthy and tall plants quickly in an indoors setup.
When you are thinking about using a T5 lighting system you need to know a few things that are curtail to the health of the plants that you are growing indoors. Firstly you need to know how to properly set-up your indoors garden and your T5 lighting system so that it gives you the best results.
The most important thing in an indoor gardening set-up is the height at which you hang your grow lights because this will determine how much light your plants will get and how intense that light will be. But when it comes to T5 grow lights everything is quite simple. Because these fluorescent lights are designed so that they don’t emit a lot of heat and run cool even after multiple hours of being turned on there is less of a chance that you can burn you plants with these lights. However I would recommend to place T5 lights about 6 to 12 inches from the plant canopies depending on what type of plants you are growing. This is the ultimate height for T5 grow lights that will allow them to give the plants the most potent illumination but the light will also be diffused enough so that the heat won’t damage even the plants that are not fans of warmth. And because the height also determines how many plants you can place under on T5 fixture the 6 to 12 inch height will allow you to place a few plants under it (depending on how big or small of a T5 grow light setup you choose) and they all will get optimum light exposure.
Then after you have properly placed you lights you also need to think about the space where your indoors garden is located in general. If you are growing your plants in a place like your basement of garage then you probably won’t have a lot of problems with heat, but those who have specially set up their indoors gardens in smaller spaces really need to watch the temperature of their grow room. Although as I mentioned before T5 grow lights don’t give out a lot of heat a small space still means that heat can accumulate faster meaning that you might need to think about some type of ventilation system that would help you discharge the excess heat and keep your plants cool.
When I think about grow lights I automatically think about artificial sunlight because grow lights essentially are an artificial way to provide plants with light they need to grow. But the same as sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day you grow lights too need a specific schedule of light and dark hours that will determine when you will turn on your T5 lights and when they will be turned off leaving the plants in the dark. This schedule is called light cycle. The more light you give to plants the faster they grow so you need to give your plants the amount of light that correlates to how fast you want your plants to grow. For example if you want a really fast growth you should put your plats on a light cycle of 24/0 to about 18/6 hours of light and darkness however if you want your plants to vegetate slower then implement a light cycle of 8 or less hours of light and leave the plants in the dark for longer.
And lastly you also need to know a little about the watering and fertilizing regiment for plants that are growing indoors under T5 grow lights. If plants that grow outside usually receive most of their nutrients from the soil they are growing in and the water from rain or dew then indoors these plants have none of that and you need to be the one who provides the water and the nutrients to them. The watering of the plants will probably different from one indoors garden to the next because not only different plants are grown in these gardens but the conditions, too, are different in each garden. But a good rule of thumb is to check the soil of the pot where your plants are growing every couple of days or so. If the soil on the outside of the pot is dry that indicates that the plants need more water but if it is still wet then the plants don’t need water yet. And the same goes for nutrients or fertilizers. Even though you can go skip fertilizing all together indoors plants will grow better and be stronger if you do decide to use some type of fertilizer on them. But to know when to use the fertilizer you also need to simply check the appearance of the plants. If it seems like they are withering away then they probably need some pick me up nutrients so they can get stronger and actually grow not to just stretch towards the light becoming skinny and weak.
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