My gardenia is doing poorly, so I bought some plant light bulbs to help it wrt light. I bought four 60 watt bulbs to put in the ceiling fixture. The bulbs look kinda blue but when they're on, they look like normal light. My question is, has anyone here swapped out their regular lightbulbs and put in the plant light bulbs and have it make a difference with their houseplants. The bulbs I bought are made by GE they're the HouseGarden plant light. They cost more than regular lightbulbs (five dollars each) but much less than the plant grow bulbs I'm finding online. I'm wondering now if they do much good.
Your problem is not with the bulb, but with the line voltage. Insufficient voltage will result in a weak spectrum emanating from your bulb. Find a large paper clip or small screwdriver and insert on end into the socket where your bulb is plugged in. If nothing happens, stick it in the other hole in the plug. If you see sparks that are six inches or more, your voltage is OK. If you do not see sparks, or the sparks are less than three inches you have a voltage problem and you need to make repairs.
Go to your fuse box and open it up. If you have old fashioned fuses, unscrew them and insert a copper penny into each hole and re-insert the fuse. If you have circuit breakers you must unscrew the face plate from the box and expose the wiring for cleaning. Boil three quarts of water and add
2 ups of salt. Pour this solution over the wiring, making sure to thouroughly soak all the wires, especially the big ones near the top.
If you follow these directions exactly, I guarantee you will have no more problems.
I grew plants for many years with great success and no natural lighting at all. i used plain cool white fluorescent bulbs and those shop light fixtures, which hold 4 three foot long tubes. I burned the tubes until they were black at the ends. I did not use fancy plant lights. HOWEVER, in order to trigger flowering, some ends of the spectrum must be included in the light. if this matters, you can obtain from companies like GE and other makers of light bulbs, tech information on this, because commercial growers of things like tomatoes, in places like Alaska, where they are grown in greenhouses, use all kinds of specialized lightgs for initiating flowering and even the ripening process. I am not suggesting you need these, they have noisy hot ballasts and are not suitable for home use. I mean to suggest only that real hard data may be obtained for free from any maker of light bulbs.
There are societies of folks who grow plants under light, i think this might be the most direct source of useful information to you. Whatever i did under lights is obsolete, it was over 20 years ago.
It is rather scary what gets said, although I'm sure this is a case of bad humour and the OP didn't actually expect anyone to try it... However, on a slightly more worrying note, that thing with the penny behind a fuse or replacing wired fuses with normal wire was common praptice just 30 years ago! I have an electrical book from the 1960's that suggests it as a temporary fix untill an electrician can be called out... Nevermind the house might burn down before he gets there to fix it properly. Anybody who still believes these shoddy fixes work, or that 'upgrading' fuse ratings is safe, just don't try it, call a professional before you fry your wiring or worse yourself.
Anyway, about your plant. It's better to put it in the ideal light location stated on the lable. If you don't have enough light, perhaps you should move it nearer a window and put a low light plant in its place? If this doesn't help, your plant needs something else. Normally plants look bad because they've been overwatered, just cutting back on watering has solved almost all my houseplant problems and the same advice has helped dozens of friends over the years. People seem to overlook that it's a house plant, not a mash plant, they do not need to be topped up all the time and kept damp constantly. Yellowing leaves is the most common sign, although most assume it's drying out too much, not rotting, so they water it even more. I used to do this...
Less common problems are too much or too little fertilizer. If you suspect this, try swaping over to the slow release tables or sticks for a while.
Then of course there's the mystry plants that just *want* to die. I have one in my room, it is watered precisely by a self watering device that has made all my other 16 plants thrive, it sits in the middle of a room where it gets light indirectly though a big window partly shaded by a tree (the lable says part shade), and I use slow release fertilizer, it even has it's own humidity tray - yet the leaves still drop off it by the dozen and it's prefered state is looking like a dead twig that's been stuck in a pot of soil, which it has looked like for two years now. It can't be me, I have 16 other house plants which attract compliments and attention all the time, some I've had for years. The only solution for these stuborn plants that just refuse to grow after lots of time and effort, toss them in the bin and buy something that will grow...
-- Bry
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That's what I thought, and I'm not much of an electrician. However the troll was truthful in one respect--if you die, your problems become someone else's. A piece of unrefrigerated dead meat does not have problems. zemedelec
LOL When I began dating my sweetheart 10yrs ago, he had a redish brown mystery twig in his apartment too. He told me it had leaves once and they were variegated.
I kept trying to convince him that it's dead and he kept insisting it's still alive. 6 months later, that twig became 2 twigs, a year later, 3 twigs, and so on. Eventually, we went on vacation and it shriveled up so, I guess it really did die. We never figured out what that thing was. :)
You really need to go get regular shop light flourescent light fixures. They are inexpensive and work great. Replace the tubes once a year (they are cheap too) because the ends of the tubes get dark after about a year as the bulb nears end of life. The so called incandecent "grow lights" are not that good at all. Matter of fact they stink.
I have herbs and zinnia growing under such a lamp... My zinnia is about to bloom :o) My DH made a desk for my boys with a fluorescent lamp over it they were leaving on for 14+ hours a day.... I chose to make use of that and all is well. I will be adding another lamp near some shelving where I plan to start seed from for next spring I've had such good success. Until recently I wasn't able to have houseplants, we had a cat for 18 years who liked her greens... so for her safety didn't have houseplants. Now that she is gone I have found a few plants that do well in low light... I couldn't tell you what thye are because they were bought at the home depot and they don't mark their plants well, ever. For the first time I am having good luck with house plants even without good light. Colleen
Before you go changing light bulbs, you should make sure that your gardenia is suffering as a result of the light. Gardenias are notorious for quick decline -- most of the time due to too much TLC. Your GE grow light may not have anything to do with it.
If you are going to consider a flourescent fixture, make sure you use full-spectrum tubes. These are more expensive (about 3x the cost) of standard tubes. And, based on my experience, they don't really promote growth of most plants. Rather they help to maintain leaf color.
If you are serious about a grow light, contact your local lighting center about a 1000W MH reflector light.
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