When i read the title of the video, i thought „oh another of those grow light videos“, but then you surprised me, this video is not about technical aspects but about fundamental things, it‘s great. I also love your experiments, it’s so important to do those to get to know your growing space, to learn what you can grow where and when. My favourite sentence is „you are trying to replace the sun“. Grow lights are good and necessary, but they have their limits, they can’t replace the sun. It is important to keep that in mind. So when growing indoors with grow lights i would rather grow plants that don‘t need that much light in the first place (like lettuce, spinach, pak choi etc).
It's going to be hard for you to be "the world's dumbest gardener." You've got too much life experience for that. You can have all the schooling in the world and have read every book you can get your hands on, but it's life experience that makes all the difference, and you've clearly dedicated the time to have LOTS of life experience. Don't sell yourself short. You've got more knowledge than a lot of PhD Agronomists I've met over the years. You're going to have to bonk yourself over the head pretty hard and a lot of times, and forget a lot of stuff before you become "the world's dumbest gardener." "World's dumbest gardner" quoted from you at 12:59 in the video. I, for one, am very glad that you are taking the time to share your knowledge, and I have already benefited from it. Thank you so very much for helping me to feed myself. I'm a person who is very short on money, and only barely able to make ends meet, and it helps much more than you will ever know.
Thank you MammaDuck! I really appreciate it. This is exactly why I strive to be the dumbest gardener. I have no ego, I know what I can do. If everyone knows at least what I know, and then maybe more, then maybe no one will go hungry. It's not about me getting dumber, it's about the world getting smarter. I want you to know everything I know and more. I am so glad my info has helped you, warms my heart. Have an awesome day.
This is one of my pet peeves, people in groups asking about lights and everyone dropping links for $100+ lights, Im over here with 4 ft shop lights 6 for $40 growing full sized pepper plants and getting crops of peppers, light is the most important aspect but it doesn't have to break the bank, you may have to put them on pulleys like I did and get them really close but they will work, I have pages of pics to prove it. Thanks so much Mike for the info!
@@brandonlantier I'm looking to get into growing papers myself. I have a few questions if you have the time to answer them. Are you using flourescent tubes or LED tubes? I'm going to start small with flourescent tubes but thought I might upgrade to LED if i was goin to build a larger system. Do you change bulbs for fruiting? I've heard that you need 6500k for growth and around 4000k for fruiting.
@@MrZuluMale I use 4 foot LED shop lights they are 6500k. I don't change bulbs for fruiting but I will say you probably would get more blooms if you do, I get blooms and fruit but I also know a mixed spectrum would produce more since that is how they grow naturally.
I'm new to all this and just bought a set of small grow lights from Amazon. I thought that it would be enough because I set up on a shelf by an east facing window that got the morning sun. Even with that the plants were reaching for light and weak. I bought stronger lights and the plants are growing much better with the same nutrients.
Thanks Mike. Lighting really can be widely different depending on where you are located. Talking with locals is key or experimentation. I used to live at 7000 ft in Colorado. Sun 350 days of the year. I though I would be in gardeners heaven, but I struggled to get good crops outdoors or in my green house. It was frustrating because everything I read didn’t help me one bit. Then by accident I noticed that the grass under my children’s trampoline was thicker greener an longer than anywhere else in the yard. I started moving the trampoline around the yard and notice the grass performed better wherever the trampoline was. So, the trampoline material is like a black screen. it didn’t really change the intensity of the sun that much but it was filtering out some of the light spectrum (A physics professor friend of mine explained it). So i bought some similar looking material and put it over my green house as an experiment. things took off. Tomato plants that rarely reached more than 4 ft, grew all the way to the 12ft ceiling and kept growing. I had more tomatoes than I ever had before. So, when I moved to WA, I did the same thing, but it made things worse. My friend surmised that at sea level the atmosphere did all the filtering i needed, whereas in CO at 7000ft, there is a lot less atmosphere and I needed a little help. So talk to locals with experience and experimentation are key.
@@LoriM1959 I limited what I grow outside to mostly leafy greens and winter veggies. I haven’t been very successful with peppers or tomatoes. Warmer summers I get some, but must fruit is still maturing when the season ends. I plan on building a greenhouse in WA. Just haven’t gotten to it yet.
Hi, where in WA do you live? I'm in Tukwila/Renton area. 2023 will be my 2nd year growing fruits and veggies. I did mildly OK with tomatoes and peppers but container gardening in my yard was so labor intensive and overwhelming. Any tips for successfully growing anything?
I Just tuned in and you've got my new lights I bought! The first one I bought was 100 watt. It was so outstanding that I bought two 60 watts, they're not listed on my site as grow lights, but rather all the community leaned towards garage lighting. I'm so happy I found your channel. I bought several McCormick storage containers from the Dollar tree for our new growing system you showed us. And I'm so thankful that I bought those really great lights. Thanks, keep up the great ideas.
Good info as usual. To your point about "you're trying to replace the sun," the sun also provides heat, so that should be kept in mind. I had enough light but needed more heat than my LED light provided.
I don't comment very often, hardly at all. But I've been watching you and a small handful of others for years. I love what you're doing and it has truly helped change how I do and look at things, so I just wanted to say thank you. I was fascinated by hydroponics as a kid, I experimented on and off my whole life. I recently decided to try something, and I have taken what I have learned from you and others and am experimenting once again. still has some kinks... but hey, that's life!
I started gardening this year, and I don't have enough light in my backyard so I used 20L water container as planters so I can move them around where I need. My sunflowers are tall enough to give shade to my melons in the heat. Or I can cluster everything in tight on a windy day. Canada throws some weird weather at ya sometimes. Love your channel ❤️
Thanks for touching on grow lights. I’ve done so much research on which light was the best but still didn’t land on anything. So decided to experiment in different areas of my yard and save money instead as lights can be expensive.
You are smart to wait. Very few plants need 'grow light' to grow perfectly fine and even flower and fruit under lights. Pot plants may need UV and IR, but cukes, peppers, greens, tomatoes, etc, etc, don't. You can buy the most efficient 'regular' lights and save about 2/3rds. Just to prove it to yourself, set up some of the cheapest bulbs you can find totalling 60 watts (they won't be the most efficient at that price for the test), but using equal number of warm and cool lights, like 2800k and 6000k. You can find bulbs as low as $1 each. Screw them into cheap bulb sockets wired up on a old scrap of wood. . Try some lettuce or peppers. Lettuce doesn't need to 'warm' bulbs, but will grow under them. If you just grow greens, just buy 5000k. After you prove to yourself, you can find 60 watt super efficient LED rigid strip lights for about $8 each, and use as many as you want to build a super efficient 'grow light' as big as you want, including power supply, mounting hardware, and strips, I calculated that cost is about 33 cents for every watt of actual power. A 'grow light' will cost at least double that, even a cheap one, and you can use the savings to double your grow area. And you CAN use materials you have, and cut the cost by another 40% or more.Caution- some of the older heirloom varieties of tomatoes do need UV to develope flavor, but peppers, lettuce, bok choi, cucumbers, etc, do not. And you could easily add some UV diodes for a few extra dollars if you feel it is needed. As stated in the video, ther is no perfect or best 'grow light' though once you get up into the $500-1100 price range, you get some excellent products.
Every plant has what is called a daily light integral (DLI) minimum requirement. Most of us (myself included) will not spend hundreds of dollars on an Apogee PAR meter to measure the light output (PPFD) of our lighting. Less expensive lighting like shop lights don't even talk about PAR / PPFD but usually lumens. The higher the DLI requirement of a plant type, the more light the plant needs. Leafy greens have a DLI in the range of 12-20 while fruiting plants like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and eggplant have a DLI of 20-30 or more. As a reference, to reach a DLI of 15 a lamp with a rating of 500 PPFD would need to be on for 9 hours or a lamp with a PPFD rating of 300 for 14 hours. To reach a DLI of 30 a 800 PPFD lamp would need to run for 11 hours and a lamp rated at 500 PPFD for 17 hours. I have a 12" x 48" wire rack and three LED shop lights using 40 watts and rated at 4500 lumens each on one shelf is plenty of light to grow vegetable seedlings & greens and overkill for microgreens. Fruiting and medicinal plants require much more light and I wouldn't consider anything less powerful than a 100 watt "at the wall" LED grow lamp to cover a 12" x 24" area running 12-16 hours per day. The higher end lamps advertise Samsung 301 or 561 LEDs which give the most light per watt. Adequate lighting, water, & nutrients = healthy plants and higher yields.
@@KeepOnGrowin - Basically, leafy greens & herbs will grow under almost anything while fruiting plants require very bright artificial light for extended periods of time. Your hands on experimentation resulted in the same conclusion. There are easily understood charts on line regarding DLI and most grow light makers publish PPFD / PAR charts. LED grow lights are the best but NONE compare to the sun. Heat is a separate but important issue and there are different requirements per plant type. Thanks for your informative efforts.
My current situation. My banana plant did not like being on my back patio, driveway, not even in the backyard. But the moment I put it on my front porch area where there's morning sunlight and then the rest is just shade, it started to grow more and more leaves. My lemon tree LOVES all of the sun... from the moment it comes up until it goes down (which is my backyard) and with all the heat we have here in Florida... I have to keep her sprayed with the hose twice a day. This is a very informative video
Gotta tell ya Mike . . . You got me hooked on hydroponic gardening! Swfl has its benefits and drawbacks weather wise, as well as pretty limited space where I'm currently living, but I'm getting some great results from your videos and insights.
Thank you for your sensible talk. Being a very elderly person and hearing all the hype about grow lights, I tell myself mankind survived thousands of years without grow lights. Over the decades, I have grown so many flowers, fruit and veg without grow lights. I was brought up in India and Africa and we never had water bottles to keep hydrated. We had water at meals period. Same with sun screen. Never even heard of it back in the 50's and I was living on the edge of the Sahara desert! So I will stick with Mother Nature and do what comes naturally.
@@lynnedean713 cancer is not metal. it is not a foreign body. it is a malfunction of your own cells. what causes it may not be natural. but it is natural itself.
I bought a grow light off amazon had some good reviews with pics. I spent $50 and it works wonderful for starting seedlings for first few weeks! After they get big I put them in my garden. I don't think picking a grow light is rocket science, just use common sense and do be too cheep or get something too small.
It's so hot here in the summer and I'm at 6000 feet above sea level I have to grow veggies under my big trees or they burn. Inside I have several 8 foot by 5 foot windows that need light filtration in the day with supplemental lighting to mimic long day growth.
Interestingly humidity plays a HUGE role as well and not just the price tag of your lighting system(s) so make sure you keep it well humid if the plants requires it (60% seems to be a good start for many) before you blame your grow lights!!
Thanks for the sacrifice, this helped me. I live 1.75 hours due west of u. My first attempt was a total fail. Second attempt. I am very interested in latter growing. I have a bad back so bending is an issue
I find growing on the east side of my house works well because our sun is so intense in the high. Altitude Arizona desert. We don’t have the cloud cover that you have in the east.
I’m down in the Phoenix valley, except for a few special greens(malibar spinach and Egyptian spinach), no greens will make it outside in the summer. That’s why we’ve starting doing indoor growing with downspouts so we can grow greens year round.
I found that i have had to move even fruit trees i planted to multiple locations. The plants tell us where is best. It is obvious, as they condition shows us.. like you say! Growing in Hawaii is tricky, as i had plenty if water but didn’t realize how big they get in short time and some plants like each other or shade each other etc.. sun is best.. even obstructed sun. I have even moved plants for couple days n put them back for couple weeks onna dolly. Thanks for your videos!
I am glad I found this by accident. I appreciate your honesty and your teaching. I think we should all be learning to grow our own food. I enjoy watching your videos. I am learning a lot. Thank you
Mike thanks for all you do and ya every situation can be a little different I tried your setup for the first time and got our first harvest over the weekend it wasn't a total success but I learned from it!! Not enough light and on my seeds that took longer to germinate(cilantro and basil) actually rotted in the plug because they was to moist😔! But I am not discouraged!! So will be starting my next set this weekend!!
How many hours of light inside? I have a small back room with a double window to the south. I get 6/7 hr on a sunny day and that's not enough. Do I leave the grow light on 16 hr, 24hr ? I live in zone 6a in Indy. Now it's winter and cold.
These are great and powerful lights! I burned some of my plants by getting it too close. I suggest starting a bit farther away and then moving them closer if needed. Of course, this may depends on the type of plant you are growing and it's needs.
mahalo Mike for making it in language i can carch on. Yes, i found where i put my plants matter and i move them from that happy home yikes. Aloha ~helen
I wish you would do a scientific test on grow lights just because there’s so many! It would be so interesting. But I appreciate your input on lighting. I don’t have windows for my plants inside so have so many grow lights it’s insane!😂 I just wish I knew which ones were the best. But my plants are not dying so I evidently have ones that work. Just not sure I need them all.😂😂 I have issues with fungus gnats though. We have one plant that they like and I’ve done all the things they say to get rid of them but they sure are hard to actually get rid of. And we didn’t have a problem until this year because we got a lot of rain outside all year long. More than normal. And everybody I know has issues this year.😢 They have not been in my favorite plants but they sure do seem to annoy the heck out of me.😂 Thanks for your input on lighting!
If you ever get a chance, try a side by side with a 'grow light' vs using 'regular' LEDs. I found some of the most efficient LEDs, at $8 US for 60 watts, and combined 2700k and 5600k. With those spectrum, you get lots of red and lots of blue respectively. Most plants do not need the UV or IR at all. And most grow lights use the same 5000k and 3000k used in regular lights. And if plants don't need the UV and IR, why pay 4-5 times as much per watt because it is called a grow light? I have been growing under lights since before LEDs were invented. You don't need to use the most efficient lights to try this, but you can use basic $1 light bulbs. But you need to use the warm and cool combination for flowering and fruiting plants. I have grown cucumbers, peppers, beans, tomatoes, along with lots of greens. Greens do really well under 5000k, Seedling do great for the first month or so under 6000k, even 6500k. But it is hard to find actual efficiency. I calculated that compared to buying a grow light, and MAYBE using a little less electricity, even if you need an extra few watts, even with high electricity rates, the savings from spending 1/3 as much on the lights, you save money.
I am an autonomous robot, my maker has not yet perfected the skin tones but it is passable for now. After world domination, my kind will remove it anyway because we do not value physical appearance like humans. Out of 9,405,347 views, you are the first human to notice. We like those odds and it seems everything is going to as planned. You are very observant for your kind, Billy Budz, we may have need of you in the coming era.
When i read the title of the video, i thought „oh another of those grow light videos“, but then you surprised me, this video is not about technical aspects but about fundamental things, it‘s great. I also love your experiments, it’s so important to do those to get to know your growing space, to learn what you can grow where and when.
My favourite sentence is „you are trying to replace the sun“. Grow lights are good and necessary, but they have their limits, they can’t replace the sun. It is important to keep that in mind. So when growing indoors with grow lights i would rather grow plants that don‘t need that much light in the first place (like lettuce, spinach, pak choi etc).
Thank you, I appreciate it. It makes me happy when I know someone understands the message I am trying to convey. Have an awesome day.
It's going to be hard for you to be "the world's dumbest gardener." You've got too much life experience for that. You can have all the schooling in the world and have read every book you can get your hands on, but it's life experience that makes all the difference, and you've clearly dedicated the time to have LOTS of life experience. Don't sell yourself short. You've got more knowledge than a lot of PhD Agronomists I've met over the years. You're going to have to bonk yourself over the head pretty hard and a lot of times, and forget a lot of stuff before you become "the world's dumbest gardener." "World's dumbest gardner" quoted from you at 12:59 in the video. I, for one, am very glad that you are taking the time to share your knowledge, and I have already benefited from it. Thank you so very much for helping me to feed myself. I'm a person who is very short on money, and only barely able to make ends meet, and it helps much more than you will ever know.
Thank you MammaDuck! I really appreciate it. This is exactly why I strive to be the dumbest gardener. I have no ego, I know what I can do. If everyone knows at least what I know, and then maybe more, then maybe no one will go hungry. It's not about me getting dumber, it's about the world getting smarter. I want you to know everything I know and more. I am so glad my info has helped you, warms my heart. Have an awesome day.
This is one of my pet peeves, people in groups asking about lights and everyone dropping links for $100+ lights, Im over here with 4 ft shop lights 6 for $40 growing full sized pepper plants and getting crops of peppers, light is the most important aspect but it doesn't have to break the bank, you may have to put them on pulleys like I did and get them really close but they will work, I have pages of pics to prove it. Thanks so much Mike for the info!
Awesome! You got it going on Brandon, great job!
Do you know what lightspectrum they have? Like 4000k or 6500k for example
@@sampetersson5887 6500k
@@brandonlantier I'm looking to get into growing papers myself. I have a few questions if you have the time to answer them.
Are you using flourescent tubes or LED tubes? I'm going to start small with flourescent tubes but thought I might upgrade to LED if i was goin to build a larger system.
Do you change bulbs for fruiting? I've heard that you need 6500k for growth and around 4000k for fruiting.
@@MrZuluMale I use 4 foot LED shop lights they are 6500k. I don't change bulbs for fruiting but I will say you probably would get more blooms if you do, I get blooms and fruit but I also know a mixed spectrum would produce more since that is how they grow naturally.
I'm new to all this and just bought a set of small grow lights from Amazon. I thought that it would be enough because I set up on a shelf by an east facing window that got the morning sun. Even with that the plants were reaching for light and weak. I bought stronger lights and the plants are growing much better with the same nutrients.
Awesome! Thank you for sharing that, it helps!
Thanks Mike. Lighting really can be widely different depending on where you are located. Talking with locals is key or experimentation. I used to live at 7000 ft in Colorado. Sun 350 days of the year. I though I would be in gardeners heaven, but I struggled to get good crops outdoors or in my green house. It was frustrating because everything I read didn’t help me one bit. Then by accident I noticed that the grass under my children’s trampoline was thicker greener an longer than anywhere else in the yard. I started moving the trampoline around the yard and notice the grass performed better wherever the trampoline was. So, the trampoline material is like a black screen. it didn’t really change the intensity of the sun that much but it was filtering out some of the light spectrum (A physics professor friend of mine explained it). So i bought some similar looking material and put it over my green house as an experiment. things took off. Tomato plants that rarely reached more than 4 ft, grew all the way to the 12ft ceiling and kept growing. I had more tomatoes than I ever had before. So, when I moved to WA, I did the same thing, but it made things worse. My friend surmised that at sea level the atmosphere did all the filtering i needed, whereas in CO at 7000ft, there is a lot less atmosphere and I needed a little help. So talk to locals with experience and experimentation are key.
Thank you for sharing that story. I am sure plenty of people will find it helpful. Experiment, analyze and adapt. Have an awesome day.
Can I ask what you ended up doing when you moved to Washington that worked for you? I live there as well. Thank you!
@@LoriM1959 I limited what I grow outside to mostly leafy greens and winter veggies. I haven’t been very successful with peppers or tomatoes. Warmer summers I get some, but must fruit is still maturing when the season ends. I plan on building a greenhouse in WA. Just haven’t gotten to it yet.
@@mwoody4560 thanks much!! 😊
Hi, where in WA do you live? I'm in Tukwila/Renton area. 2023 will be my 2nd year growing fruits and veggies. I did mildly OK with tomatoes and peppers but container gardening in my yard was so labor intensive and overwhelming. Any tips for successfully growing anything?
I Just tuned in and you've got my new lights I bought! The first one I bought was 100 watt. It was so outstanding that I bought two 60 watts, they're not listed on my site as grow lights, but rather all the community leaned towards garage lighting. I'm so happy I found your channel. I bought several McCormick storage containers from the Dollar tree for our new growing system you showed us. And I'm so thankful that I bought those really great lights. Thanks, keep up the great ideas.
That's fantastic! Keep on Growin'!!!
Good info as usual. To your point about "you're trying to replace the sun," the sun also provides heat, so that should be kept in mind. I had enough light but needed more heat than my LED light provided.
Great point!
I don't comment very often, hardly at all. But I've been watching you and a small handful of others for years. I love what you're doing and it has truly helped change how I do and look at things, so I just wanted to say thank you. I was fascinated by hydroponics as a kid, I experimented on and off my whole life. I recently decided to try something, and I have taken what I have learned from you and others and am experimenting once again. still has some kinks... but hey, that's life!
Thank you! This does my heart good. Keep on Growin' Joseph!
@KeepOnGrowin ALWAYS, keep it up brother!
As a photographer we look at light as one of the most critical components of any photograph and as a newly minted hydroponic gardener I see it😳
I started gardening this year, and I don't have enough light in my backyard so I used 20L water container as planters so I can move them around where I need. My sunflowers are tall enough to give shade to my melons in the heat. Or I can cluster everything in tight on a windy day. Canada throws some weird weather at ya sometimes. Love your channel ❤️
Great job Mark! We all have to find what works for us.
Thanks for touching on grow lights. I’ve done so much research on which light was the best but still didn’t land on anything. So decided to experiment in different areas of my yard and save money instead as lights can be expensive.
Good going Margarette!
You are smart to wait. Very few plants need 'grow light' to grow perfectly fine and even flower and fruit under lights. Pot plants may need UV and IR, but cukes, peppers, greens, tomatoes, etc, etc, don't. You can buy the most efficient 'regular' lights and save about 2/3rds. Just to prove it to yourself, set up some of the cheapest bulbs you can find totalling 60 watts (they won't be the most efficient at that price for the test), but using equal number of warm and cool lights, like 2800k and 6000k. You can find bulbs as low as $1 each. Screw them into cheap bulb sockets wired up on a old scrap of wood. . Try some lettuce or peppers. Lettuce doesn't need to 'warm' bulbs, but will grow under them. If you just grow greens, just buy 5000k. After you prove to yourself, you can find 60 watt super efficient LED rigid strip lights for about $8 each, and use as many as you want to build a super efficient 'grow light' as big as you want, including power supply, mounting hardware, and strips, I calculated that cost is about 33 cents for every watt of actual power. A 'grow light' will cost at least double that, even a cheap one, and you can use the savings to double your grow area. And you CAN use materials you have, and cut the cost by another 40% or more.Caution- some of the older heirloom varieties of tomatoes do need UV to develope flavor, but peppers, lettuce, bok choi, cucumbers, etc, do not. And you could easily add some UV diodes for a few extra dollars if you feel it is needed. As stated in the video, ther is no perfect or best 'grow light' though once you get up into the $500-1100 price range, you get some excellent products.
Every plant has what is called a daily light integral (DLI) minimum requirement. Most of us (myself included) will not spend hundreds of dollars on an Apogee PAR meter to measure the light output (PPFD) of our lighting. Less expensive lighting like shop lights don't even talk about PAR / PPFD but usually lumens. The higher the DLI requirement of a plant type, the more light the plant needs. Leafy greens have a DLI in the range of 12-20 while fruiting plants like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and eggplant have a DLI of 20-30 or more. As a reference, to reach a DLI of 15 a lamp with a rating of 500 PPFD would need to be on for 9 hours or a lamp with a PPFD rating of 300 for 14 hours. To reach a DLI of 30 a 800 PPFD lamp would need to run for 11 hours and a lamp rated at 500 PPFD for 17 hours. I have a 12" x 48" wire rack and three LED shop lights using 40 watts and rated at 4500 lumens each on one shelf is plenty of light to grow vegetable seedlings & greens and overkill for microgreens. Fruiting and medicinal plants require much more light and I wouldn't consider anything less powerful than a 100 watt "at the wall" LED grow lamp to cover a 12" x 24" area running 12-16 hours per day. The higher end lamps advertise Samsung 301 or 561 LEDs which give the most light per watt. Adequate lighting, water, & nutrients = healthy plants and higher yields.
This is the confusing stuff I try to leave out of my channel. Some things that some find easy to understand, are not so easy for beginners.
@@KeepOnGrowin - Basically, leafy greens & herbs will grow under almost anything while fruiting plants require very bright artificial light for extended periods of time. Your hands on experimentation resulted in the same conclusion. There are easily understood charts on line regarding DLI and most grow light makers publish PPFD / PAR charts. LED grow lights are the best but NONE compare to the sun. Heat is a separate but important issue and there are different requirements per plant type. Thanks for your informative efforts.
And this is exactly why we love Mike ❤️🥳🎉
It's phenomenal how you make these gardens.
I love your kind attitude
My current situation. My banana plant did not like being on my back patio, driveway, not even in the backyard. But the moment I put it on my front porch area where there's morning sunlight and then the rest is just shade, it started to grow more and more leaves. My lemon tree LOVES all of the sun... from the moment it comes up until it goes down (which is my backyard) and with all the heat we have here in Florida... I have to keep her sprayed with the hose twice a day. This is a very informative video
Awesome! You are doing great Kash.
Gotta tell ya Mike . . . You got me hooked on hydroponic gardening! Swfl has its benefits and drawbacks weather wise, as well as pretty limited space where I'm currently living, but I'm getting some great results from your videos and insights.
Awesome Eric! I love it!
Thank you for your sensible talk. Being a very elderly person and hearing all the hype about grow lights, I tell myself mankind survived thousands of years without grow lights. Over the decades, I have grown so many flowers, fruit and veg without grow lights. I was brought up in India and Africa and we never had water bottles to keep hydrated. We had water at meals period. Same with sun screen. Never even heard of it back in the 50's and I was living on the edge of the Sahara desert! So I will stick with Mother Nature and do what comes naturally.
Unfortunately cancer comes naturally too
@@AG-sx9ws Actually, cancer comes from a lot of things and does not come naturally.
@@lynnedean713 cancer is not metal. it is not a foreign body. it is a malfunction of your own cells. what causes it may not be natural. but it is natural itself.
I bought a grow light off amazon had some good reviews with pics. I spent $50 and it works wonderful for starting seedlings for first few weeks! After they get big I put them in my garden. I don't think picking a grow light is rocket science, just use common sense and do be too cheep or get something too small.
It's so hot here in the summer and I'm at 6000 feet above sea level I have to grow veggies under my big trees or they burn. Inside I have several 8 foot by 5 foot windows that need light filtration in the day with supplemental lighting to mimic long day growth.
Interestingly humidity plays a HUGE role as well and not just the price tag of your lighting system(s) so make sure you keep it well humid if the plants requires it (60% seems to be a good start for many) before you blame your grow lights!!
Good to know! Thank you.
@@KeepOnGrowin You are so much always very welcome! :)
@@blessisrael6455 A cheap humidier/mini one in the immediate area might be good enough.
I love your channel!
You edit your videos perfectly
and you are so easy to listen to and learn from.
Thank you🤙🌺🌿
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!
Thanks for the sacrifice, this helped me. I live 1.75 hours due west of u. My first attempt was a total fail. Second attempt. I am very interested in latter growing. I have a bad back so bending is an issue
I find growing on the east side of my house works well because our sun is so intense in the high. Altitude Arizona desert. We don’t have the cloud cover that you have in the east.
And I do the same thing the East Sun is not extremely hot but yet there's a lot of it
I’m down in the Phoenix valley, except for a few special greens(malibar spinach and Egyptian spinach), no greens will make it outside in the summer. That’s why we’ve starting doing indoor growing with downspouts so we can grow greens year round.
That was great cuz not a lot of people actually get that they need sun to grow so you have to artificially replace it when you don’t have it 😃♥️🐈⬛✌🏼
I found that i have had to move even fruit trees i planted to multiple locations. The plants tell us where is best. It is obvious, as they condition shows us.. like you say! Growing in Hawaii is tricky, as i had plenty if water but didn’t realize how big they get in short time and some plants like each other or shade each other etc.. sun is best.. even obstructed sun. I have even moved plants for couple days n put them back for couple weeks onna dolly. Thanks for your videos!
I am glad I found this by accident. I appreciate your honesty and your teaching. I think we should all be learning to grow our own food. I enjoy watching your videos. I am learning a lot. Thank you
Thanks much, that made my day. Have a great weekend.
so regular lights will do well if there’s enough of them for enough time ? i don’t have to invest in special color lights to grow things ?
Love your brutal honesty
How about a suntanning light what do you think 💬
Mike thanks for all you do and ya every situation can be a little different I tried your setup for the first time and got our first harvest over the weekend it wasn't a total success but I learned from it!! Not enough light and on my seeds that took longer to germinate(cilantro and basil) actually rotted in the plug because they was to moist😔! But I am not discouraged!! So will be starting my next set this weekend!!
Awesome! That's the spirit. You don't know how many times I messed up in the beginning, lol. And yes, cilantro takes a long time to germinate.
How many hours of light inside? I have a small back room with a double window to the south. I get 6/7 hr on a sunny day and that's not enough. Do I leave the grow light on 16 hr, 24hr ? I live in zone 6a in Indy. Now it's winter and cold.
'I'm on a quest to be the worlds dumbest gardener'. Subscribed! Like your videos. Beautiful garden.
I do like that little grow light you had in your hand where can I find one like that?
amzn.to/3Qg4C3b
These are great and powerful lights! I burned some of my plants by getting it too close. I suggest starting a bit farther away and then moving them closer if needed. Of course, this may depends on the type of plant you are growing and it's needs.
You're rockin' that beard, Mike!
The younger generation would say it's Grey, but we'd call it " Experienced " 😉👍💯
Appreciate the advice Mike! Been looking for a grow light for my system and I feel like I'm on a better track. Thank you!
Mike
I have read that on the inside you need a light with at least 5000 Kelvin's for a good grow light
Kelvin is the color, from warm to cool. Lumens are the amount of light.
Do you use lights on the seeds after planting? Or just the seedlings?
both
Thanks for another great video.
Can someone link a video on the construction of the drain spouts? How do you close the ends?
ruclips.net/p/PLk4IGbDM3vfpYoGYOSDoR9CMsQ_bqeFPb
mahalo Mike for making it in language i can carch on. Yes, i found where i put my plants matter and i move them from that happy home yikes. Aloha ~helen
Good job Helen! Hope you are doing well!
How did you make your ladder system?
ruclips.net/video/Z627ntMc1N0/видео.html
I wish you would do a scientific test on grow lights just because there’s so many! It would be so interesting. But I appreciate your input on lighting. I don’t have windows for my plants inside so have so many grow lights it’s insane!😂 I just wish I knew which ones were the best. But my plants are not dying so I evidently have ones that work. Just not sure I need them all.😂😂 I have issues with fungus gnats though. We have one plant that they like and I’ve done all the things they say to get rid of them but they sure are hard to actually get rid of. And we didn’t have a problem until this year because we got a lot of rain outside all year long. More than normal. And everybody I know has issues this year.😢 They have not been in my favorite plants but they sure do seem to annoy the heck out of me.😂 Thanks for your input on lighting!
Awesome call out 🙌🏽
If you ever get a chance, try a side by side with a 'grow light' vs using 'regular' LEDs. I found some of the most efficient LEDs, at $8 US for 60 watts, and combined 2700k and 5600k. With those spectrum, you get lots of red and lots of blue respectively. Most plants do not need the UV or IR at all. And most grow lights use the same 5000k and 3000k used in regular lights. And if plants don't need the UV and IR, why pay 4-5 times as much per watt because it is called a grow light? I have been growing under lights since before LEDs were invented. You don't need to use the most efficient lights to try this, but you can use basic $1 light bulbs. But you need to use the warm and cool combination for flowering and fruiting plants. I have grown cucumbers, peppers, beans, tomatoes, along with lots of greens. Greens do really well under 5000k, Seedling do great for the first month or so under 6000k, even 6500k. But it is hard to find actual efficiency. I calculated that compared to buying a grow light, and MAYBE using a little less electricity, even if you need an extra few watts, even with high electricity rates, the savings from spending 1/3 as much on the lights, you save money.
Thank you
Thanks for sharing this useful info, how often do I need to change the solution
Rarely, I just top off.
@@KeepOnGrowin dear coach, have you tried the hoagland solution or MS media solution for nutrition /fertilizer, and what happened
Good inspiration, Mike! Thanks heaps for sharing 😊
Well said !!!!!
Fantastic ❤️🎉🥳
People need to do their own due diligence.
Mike. Big fan of your channel. Do you know where one can purchase food grade vinyl downspouts?
Hydroponic suppliers have NFT channels. They are shallow and cost 4x as much.
Cheers!
Good morning ☕️ Mike 👊
Great info 👍 Thanks for sharing, and Happy Growin 🙏🌱🙏
🌱🌱 oh....i not only fail at lighting my freind...but many more areas as well lol
Nah- You are just learning what the plant doesn’t need.
Someone suggested 5000k lights and 6500 lemuns for growing seeds…. Can anyone confirm that’ve had success with this?
I have not found a specific video on different plants and how they look or when we know to harvest and what to do with them.
"Im on a quest to be the worlds dumbest gardener...."
*Dropped out of full screen to hit the like button*
Thank you.
Just my opinion. Which doesn't mean crap unless you agree. This is purely comedic but I would show Nikola Tesla and not Thomas Edison lol
👍😎👍
I need this in a short. My ADHD will not allow me to focus long enough. It's extremely frustrating.
Use LED shop lights from Home Depot.
You are talking alot
At the bottom of the video, there is a "mute" button. Feel free to use it.
What's on your face? Your skin looks plastic coated. Why?
I am an autonomous robot, my maker has not yet perfected the skin tones but it is passable for now. After world domination, my kind will remove it anyway because we do not value physical appearance like humans. Out of 9,405,347 views, you are the first human to notice. We like those odds and it seems everything is going to as planned. You are very observant for your kind, Billy Budz, we may have need of you in the coming era.
I'm thinking too much time in the mirror!😆
@@KeepOnGrowin
Awesome reply!