radejr
Newly Registered
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2011 10:56 am

T5 Lighting What To Grow

I have a Sunleaves Pioneer 8 T5 light it has 4 Grow lights and 4 Bloom T5 bulbs in it.

I know generally under T5 bulbs anything leafy or greens can be grown.

My question is what else can I grow with this setup? Id like to grow tomatoes or green peppers or jalapenos but will my spectrum allow these to fruit? I know its possibly a long shot on big beef tomatoes but what about cherries?

I don't see much talk about T5 lighting on this forum.

Thanks for any help.

hydroguy
Senior Member
Posts: 221
Joined: Thu May 13, 2010 11:02 am
Location: Midwest, USA

Welcome to the forum rade. I've not personally ran a light system like the one you have but congrats on having one! Thats a real fine light for any indoor gardner. I've had my eye on one but not spent the $300+ they costs.

I have a number of buddies that have ran them over the years and they all said the same thing basically. It will grow just about anything but the management of your grow has got to be top notch when growing light loving plants. Light penetration into the canopy is the draw back for flouro's compared to HID's is what they all said. So I'd say it would grow some tomatoes if they are trained properly. The plants I've seen grown under a T5 like yours loved light and the harvest was respectable to say the least.

Good luck and lets know how things go with your next grow,

hydroguy

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Hydroponics
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Posts: 64
Joined: Thu Jan 27, 2011 9:27 pm
Location: Garden

I just saw this thread, but I have used every size of the Pioneer T5 System.

You can get orange glowing bloom bulbs and the daylight vegetative bulbs.

Since you have the 8 tube version you will want to use 6 or 7 daylight tubes and 1 or 2 bloom tubes in the same fixture for vegetative (green leafy growth).

For the bloom phase of plants like tomatoes, strawberries, and peppers, you will want to use all 8 orange bloom tubes or add in one or two day light tubes.

The thing about the Sunleaves lights is they don't get extremely hot. The 8 tube fixture gets hotter than the others because there are so many tubes, but the plants can grow up to 2-3 inches away without burn. If you use them in an airtight box you will want one or two circulation fans and one strong inline exhaust.

The 8 bulb fixture should be able to grow tomatoes but there is a trick to it. You have to reset how you think about growing tomatoes. Like Hydroguy said, the fluorescents do not penetrate deep into the canopy. You want to get a short variety of tomato and send them into the bloom phase before they get really tall.



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