Homestead Hack #1: Increasing Light for Plants with Reflective Mylar
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- Опубликовано: 28 авг 2024
- Homestead Hacks is a series sharing our shortcuts for common challenges around the homestead.
This week, we will be tackling the issue of supplemental lighting on these dark December days. We will be using reflective mylar as an inexpensive mirror to reflect both sunlight and grow lights back onto our plants.
mylar from video :
amzn.to/35VWaBI
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An old school farm boy here. Lol. I have a large basement level room with one small east facing window 12"x29". As the sun moves through the sky it is obviously only capable of producing a beam into my garden starting room and only for a few hours. Mirrors are a useful tool for focusing light later in the day through that window.
Another useful tool is mylar space blankets on the walls to bounce that light throughout the room.
I do use inexpensive supplemental grow lighting to aid in growth, but ultimately it is trivial.
In short the use of mirrors should be something that a person utilizes.
Edit: I actually lined the room with that paper back mylar wrap used for heat ducts. It has a diamond pattern and will break up the focal pattern to prevent any hotspots.
Keep on providing useful skills and sustainability to people my friends. We all know that the few provide for the masses.
Emergency survival blankets are a great cheap source of mylar too, though they are extremely thin and vulnerable to ripping, unlike that thick roll. I made 2x2" frames for sheets to surround my outdoor grow-lighted planters. They're a bit see-through but I actually consider that a bonus for practical reasons, and they reflect enough that they're still doing the job.
❤❤❤ Sending love from Boston(and Cape Cod), Ma!!!
Great camera work! very professional looking video!
Your voice is cute and nice confidence sparking aswel the tips for my hoya plants flower!
What were the results?
Yes very cool. I like your video. Thank you for sharing
Hiya. Nice job first off. Just watched this hoping to find an easy way to explain light absorbtion and reflection to a friend building a box to showcase her art :) I noticed a HUGE NO NO near the end of your video that in your case will just prevent your mylar from working as effectivly as it should, but in the case of someone using high wattage HID lighting, will most certainly damage their plants.
You should NEVER apply mylar smooth like that. It causes the incoming light to be focused, like a mirror , and therefore leads to hot spots, meaning the light reflects stronger in some spots and weaker in others. If you hung a high wattage lamp, like say a 400-1000 watt HID over that area with that smooth mylar, you'd BURN your plants whereever the light focuses and causes a hot spot, (light burn). In your particular case, you are most likely just getting inefficient spread of the reflected light, which may not be a big deal for you, but you'd certainly find your plants performing better if you properly install your mylar, as then the light will be evenly reflected for your garden to enjoy.
To properly apply mylar in a growspace, ALWAYS crinkle the mylar. The crinkled textue prevents the light from focusing and causing hot spots when it's reflected. That's because the crinkles are all litte angle changes and refract the light, giving you a lovely, plant friendly, even spread of light coverage from the reflected light. :) I'm sure you can verify that information via any horticultural institution or agricultural college...and of course on google, but as this video is fine proof of, not all information found on the interweb is accurate, and much of it can be harmful.
I hope you found this helpful. I very much enjoyed your video, and I think your presentation is FANTASTIC :) It will definetly help my friend understand how mylar will be useful in her lightbox. Thanks so much! Cheers!
PS..For those worried about the crinkled mylar being ugly; it actually looks great once crinkled and hung properly, plus you'll notice right away, that you can look at the mylar and not get a reflected beam of light in your eye as you may from the smooth aspplication when observing from certain angles. Furthermore, when it comes to providing delicious light energy to our flora for photosynthasis, a concious human should always choose FUNCTION over FASHION :) Toodles!
This is fascinating! I never knew that crinkling the mylar would make such a difference. This winter we are low on starts to try it on , but I definitely will be trying it out when next we have plant starts. Thank you for watching and commenting!
If I can't get mylar, can I use crinkled tin foil? My window doesn't get much direct sunlight either. Do I put mirrors in my yard facing to my plants? Sorry for dumb questions.
Can I use foil? Really hot summer but my window doesn't get direct sunlight. Baby plant growing good until it started really trying to reach the light.
How well does this work when just growing on a window sill / table next to window? No grow lights.
I found my new crush
You and Michaela Jill Murphy sound quite similar.
The reflection when you’re in front it 🤣
I kept getting distracted by it while filming. It was so hard not to laugh.
did it do a good job in preventing the plants growing towards the southern light unevenly?
yes it did better than we expected. However I would still rotate the plants. But we didn't have to do this nearly as much.
@@BlackRabbitHomestead thanks, i'm looking at places to buy it from now
@@4bag I have an affiliate link in the description of the video
Grow lights are comparatively cheap 😊
You sound like bart simpson
i think i seen you on a tv show selling rabbits at the fair recently
Does aluminum tin foil help? 😅
Yes and no as it can cause hot spots
@@justinomar9210 hot spots? It cant be hotter than direct sunlight.
Beautiful girl...
Creepy commenter...
@@csn583 yup... Very creepy...