Lighting To Use For Growing Tomatoes
- Image by cheryl.dudley via Flickr
In order to succeed at growing tomatoes inside using artificial lights, you need to some facts. To grow tomatoes you need to use one of three basic types of artificial lights.
The first, fluorescent lights are what most people use. There are standard fluorescents, high output fluorescents, compact fluorescents and HID hybrid lights.
Advantages of fluorescent lights are that you can move the lamps closer to the plants because they do not give off a lot of heat which can ruin your plants, and that fluorescent lights offer full spectrum lighting.
Disadvantages of using fluorescent lighting are their inefficiency and poor light penetration. If you have a whole bank of compact fluorescent lights they use as much energy as one HPS (high pressure sodium) bulb, but will not produce as much usable light for your garden.
Indoor tomato growers also have HID grow lights, metal halide grow lights, LED grow lights and incandescent grow lights available to them. Any of these lights work well for indoor gardening, but are tricky to work with. It is best to keep it simple and just go with the fluorescent lights for growing your tomatoes.
Some of the benefits from using artificial lights to grow tomatoes include be able to jump start the growing season, having homegrown tomatoes all year round no matter what the weather is outside. Also, you can determine how much light your plants get, and when they get it. It is easy to modify the amount of light your plants get by simply moving the lamp closer or further away when using artificial light. Plants can also have less diseases and pests, grow larger and thrive when grown under artificial lighting.
It is best to use the HPS light in your indoor tomato garden. Your garden size will be the biggest element when determining wattage of the HPS bulb. I believe the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages when growing tomatoes under lights.
Tagged with: growing tomatoes • growing tomatoes under lights • using lights to grow tomatoes
Filed under: Gardening Tips • container gardening
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Thanks for the info. I started over 100 tomato plants using ordinary 40-watt fluorescent shop lights. These worked very well up to point until the plants were about 2-feet tall. I didn’t plan to continue growing them indoors, though. If you plan to grow tomatoes indoors I can guarantee you’ll need a LOT of space. I found myself quickly running out of room once the plants reached 8 weeks of growth.
I have been cultivating tomatoes for almost a year now but haven’t tried using artificial light I am just dependent to sunlight but got problem with the weather sometimes. Will the tomatoes grows better with this artificial lightning?