If you place your plants under compact fluorescent light bulbs, you should be able to grow everything from highlight to lowlight plants. Keep the fluorescent light fixtures a few inches above the canopy of the plants.

Tip: if you have plants with dense foliage (shades lower branches) try to provide some side lighting, or keep these plants at the window.

Thank you so very much, I feel so much better about this.

I will say however, that the bulb you purchased doesn't sound like a very strong bulb...maybe 13W or so? If you want compact fluorescent bulbs that will do something for your plants, concentrate on bulbs rated at 42W-real watts, not "equivalent" watts-or more. You will have to look the packaging over carefully to find the true wattage of the bulb.

The brightest bulbs you will probably find in a hardware store are 42W. The brightest I've seen in grocery and department stores is 13W. On the internet, you can find bulbs as strong as 105W.

An 85W CFL bulb will put out 8000 lumens or more, just to give you perspective.

Best of luck!

Sam

The most common 1380 lumen compact fluorescent is a 23W spiral, usually a warm white 2700K. Long-tube fluorescents can be slightly more efficient, are slightly cheaper, and last longer than compact fluorescents, so use 4' shop lights if you need to light an area that big. Really powerful compact fluorescents are available up to 200W which can be useful for high light plants.

Lighting large high light plants can be difficult. You can't just move the lights very close because you'd only be lighting the tip of the plant. You either need a very bright light maybe a couple of feet from the top of the plants or you need some vertical lighting at the side of the plants. High-light plants need 1,000 foot-candles or more, which means a minimum 20W of fluorescent power per square foot of lit area, assuming a good reflector system to get the light into your plants. Light levels a few feet from a small east window are almost irrelevant to a citrus tree so you have to do it all with your lamps. Plan on running the lamps for all daylight hours, maybe a little longer in winter. Try to find a cool white bulb also, maybe a 4100K or a "daylight" 6500K bulb.

Thank you all so much for all of this valuable information. I am going to the hardware store today and see what they have. Hopefully I can find the shop lights that you talked about and a higher wattage for the flourescent lights. They just finished painting the kitchen. I asked for a light color so hopefully this will help reflect the light too. I hate moving..I am personally taking my plants to their new home because I don't trust anyone with them and moving companies don't insure plants for damage. Thanks again for all of your great advice!

"In my new apartment, it is definetely a bigger kitchen however a way smaller window. The lighting is poor totally.."

I see a couple of things you can do. Other than supplementing light over the plants, which is good. Overdriving lights turns out to be not that hard.

One: You could build a windowbox for the kitchen window.

It wouldn't necessarily be a permanent change. No tearing out walls. Just mount an extended bay window setup outside your existing window.

You might not be able to use the extra space in the winter, but ironically, the bay window will help insulate your kitchen when it's cold.

Two: this is outside the box. In fact, I threw out the box. If you have limited light in your kitchen, you need to squeeze all the lumens out of the available sun.

So, you could look up something called Holographic Diffraction Gratings, AKA HOE, Holographic Optical Elements.

This is a semi-transparent film also called a suncatcher.

I'm thinking of getting some of this stuff for my greenhouse and my own kitchen window shelf.

The film catches the light, and diffracts it from bright sunlight to a widespread wash of white light.

No shadows. No bright light here, darkness there. Which is good, as really strong light is bad for some plants.

You'd put this film in your window and it would spread out the light and redirect it to where the plants are.