Is my indoor light at a good distance?

[knewbe]

I have a 100w/14w* 5000k 1050lumen LED flood light that I am using to get a head start on my peppers here in 5a/b. This is my first time growing anything indoors and I was curious if this is enough light for these three and if the distance is ok? The warm weather and sunshine will be back for good(fingers crossed) by Saturday so I can take these little guys back outside.

Any info would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Plant/Lights

[pepperhead212]

Welcome to the forum!

I assume you mean by 100w, that this is a 100w equivalent, and the 14w is the actual wattage? 1050 lumens isn't much at all - I have 32w T8 bulbs with an output of 3300 lumens, and have sets of 4 of these over 2 trays of seedlings, to put this in perspective. And as far away as your light is from the plants, those two plants in the larger pots don't look too bad! The one in the smaller pot looks leggy, like it's reaching for the light. Hopefully you can get it in the ground soon.

[knewbe]

Welcome to the forum!

I assume you mean by 100w, that this is a 100w equivalent, and the 14w is the actual wattage? 1050 lumens isn't much at all - I have 32w T8 bulbs with an output of 3300 lumens, and have sets of 4 of these over 2 trays of seedlings, to put this in perspective. And as far away as your light is from the plants, those two plants in the larger pots don't look too bad! The one in the smaller pot looks leggy, like it's reaching for the light. Hopefully you can get it in the ground soon.

Yes sorry 100w equiv with 14w actual. Oh wow, being in south dakota the weather did what it does here and instantly changed from 70s+ and sunny for the week to 50s and below with rain until Saturday so after doing some quick research I went and bought the light and bulb(cheap) to hopefully try and save them for the week.

Is 1050 lumens going to provide enough light until the weekend or should I invest in something more sufficient like a T8 bulb?

Also, the leggy one in the small pot is a brandywine tomato. Would it be okay to plant it tomorrow with weather around 50's with colder night or should I keep it indoors with the peppers and possibly put it in a bigger pot until its OK to plant outside?

[pepperhead212]

Yes sorry 100w equiv with 14w actual. Oh wow, being in south dakota the weather did what it does here and instantly changed from 70s+ and sunny for the week to 50s and below with rain until Saturday so after doing some quick research I went and bought the light and bulb(cheap) to hopefully try and save them for the week.

Is 1050 lumens going to provide enough light until the weekend or should I invest in something more sufficient like a T8 bulb?

Also, the leggy one in the small pot is a brandywine tomato. Would it be okay to plant it tomorrow with weather around 50's with colder night or should I keep it indoors with the peppers and possibly put it in a bigger pot until its OK to plant outside?

That the small pot is a tomato explains that! I couldn't imagine a pepper looking like that, and couldn't really see it too well.

I wouldn't think that if you are just talking about 4 or 5 days that it would make much difference getting another bulb.

Here's an experiment that I did with a very cheap 17w LED light that I got from Amazon. I Grew some seedlings for greens, and compared them to those grown under my normal lights. You can see in this photo that they grew very well, but the problem is that to get the light to cover a lot of the area, I had to bring it farther away from the tray, and the light wasn't as bright - the problem with those kinds of lights.


And here are some grown under my T8 bulbs:

[applestar]

Agree you should probably lower the light some more. With your nifty metal folding screen to reflect the light, it should be OK to make the pool of light much smaller. Even better if you put up something reflective on the wall -- aluminum foil, or my fave -- inside of a cut open family/party size chip bag.

I would raise the tomato higher -- tomatoes need more light than peppers -- and put it in a square margarine tub, or something similar with a bottle lid (or rocks, marbles, etc.) riser. Leave water in the bottom below the bottom of the actual tomato container. This will create higher humidity around the drain holes and help the roots from drying out.

Alternatively, if it fits (it looks as though it might) you can put the tomato container directly on top of the soilmix of one of the peppers.

[rainbowgardener]

Agreed, light needs to be definitely closer. Light intensity varies with the inverse square of the distance. That means if you have a light 2 inches away and you move it to 4 inches, it is now getting one quarter the light energy. If you move it to one foot (12") away, that is 6 times the distance, so it is getting 1/36 th the light energy, or about 3%.

[knewbe]

Agree you should probably lower the light some more. With your nifty metal folding screen to reflect the light, it should be OK to make the pool of light much smaller. Even better if you put up something reflective on the wall -- aluminum foil, or my fave -- inside of a cut open family/party size chip bag.

I would raise the tomato higher -- tomatoes need more light than peppers -- and put it in a square margarine tub, or something similar with a bottle lid (or rocks, marbles, etc.) riser. Leave water in the bottom below the bottom of the actual tomato container. This will create higher humidity around the drain holes and help the roots from drying out.

Alternatively, if it fits (it looks as though it might) you can put the tomato container directly on top of the soilmix of one of the peppers.

Okay, so I lowered the light quite a few inches closer, raised the tomato ALOT and I kind of went crazy with the aluminum foil haha.

What do you guys think? light still need to be closer? possibly more tin foil?:lol:

Light Height

Foil Crazy