I would prop up the other tropicals so that they can get as close as possible to the light. Use books, boxes, kitchen shelf organizers, empty pots, whatever you have handy. Get the tops of the plants within a couple inches of the tubes.

This will be a decent amount of light to get your plants through the winter, but don't plan to grow year round like that unless you have your light in front of a bright window or you put your plants outdoors for the summer.

what would happen if he did grow them like that all year?

These are all full sun tropical plants. I have overwintered hibiscus and passiflora this way, and I find that even with the lights in front of a west window, the plants get stretched out and lanky, they won't bloom, and they become prone to bugs.

I have a client with a hibiscus in an unobstructed south window year round and it does well and blooms. The sun is just so much brighter than the tubes will ever be.

My hibiscus just began blooming again. It is in a south facing sunroom. So much depends on the zone you are in. Our 6b zone (very close to zone 7) has quite a bit of winter sun so most of my tropicals don't get leggy over the winter. They even begin blooming again in Feb.

ok watergal,well im growing a Candvish banana, Vanilla Planifolia, Black Pepper, Coffee tree and Miracle Berry Tree. and they seem to be doing good with my 4x48W FL bulbs over them. They get a lil sun from a west facing window too. Im in zone 8 gardensewer, so im not sure how much sun i get compared to you though.

Your fluorescent setup is going to give nothing like full sunlight. The plants you mention probably won't flower under the lights, they'll just tick along. See how they do for maybe six months and come back for advice on something stronger if you feel they aren't all they could be.

Try to surround the whole growing area with something to reflect back the light, mylar or white boards. You could maybe have something movable since I guess you'll want to see the plants! Putting tall plants close to lights doesn't really achieve much. The top leaves might be a couple of inches from the light but most of the plant is still a foot away and too dark.

yeah i know it wont be as good as full sunlight. what if i added some compact FL spot lights in there with my FL and the west window light? yeah ive been looking at Mylar and surrounding at least most of it with it to reflect some of the light back. ok

Some compact FL would help, try to get the highest wattage you can find, the piddly little ones won't be much use. Mylar or white plastic to reflect light will help too.

So it seems as if this set-up is not much help for the plants. I do have some small south facing windos and have a hibiscus and oleander trees there, the hibiscus is doing marginal and the olender is fine but got some type of bugs. I also have some mandevillas and passiflora in an east window and there are growing with some blooms on the mandevilla. I thought that this light set-up would be better than these windows. I do also have a chenille plant, a kohlera, an abutilon, 2 bougainvilleas and a thunbergia under these lights. The abutilon seems to be doing better than it was in the west windo and is ready to bloom. The kohlera and chinelle already were in bud/bloom and continue to open more buds.

Do I need to add something like a metal halide to get blooms from the hibiscus and passiflora? Is wattage the determination of this?

Thanks

Do you know the variety of hibiscus you have? The plain single red ones are much more vigorous and adapt better to indoors than the fancy multicolored hybrids. I have a single red that I used to overwinter by my south facing sliding glass door. It would set buds outside, I'd bring it indoors in October, and it would bloom through about New Year's, with maybe a stray flower occasionally after that. Then I would usually end up with bugs, or it would get too big and I would prune it, so flower production stopped until I put it outdoors and it got a couple months of summer sun again. So a large, unobstructed south window can get you flowers on the hibiscus. Haven't tried it on the other tropicals.

I bought a 400W metal halide for the hibiscus collection, and it is about as effective as the south window was, but now my collection has gotten too big, so none of them are as close to the light as they would like to be, and I'm not getting blooms in the winter any more.

The problem with the tropicals is that they just get so big, you need a lot of wattage to penetrate down beyond the top few inches of leaves. The fluorescents just don't push the light down that far. Fluorescents are best suited for shorter plants, like african violets, shorter orchids, and other blooming plants that you can keep under about 8 to 10 inches.

Below is my favorite "light gardening 101" link.

Here is a link that might be useful: lights 101

I bought 2 one is called Electic Glow and the other is Kona. The first one is over 2 feet high and the second is about 1 foot. Thanks for the web link. Even if I get a metal halide and high pressure sodium, it soulds like for these bigger plants it might need more. I guess I can keep them alive inside and have to wait until summer to get blooms.

watergal, ok i will try to get 100W + CF bulbs. do you use them? yeah im trying to find a pull down shade i can put the mylar on so i can see my plants if i want too. but i cant seem to find any of the shades. do you use mylar?

I have used CF bulbs occasionally, to add a bit of extra light for special small plants that needed it. I just go to the hardware store and buy the biggest I can find, and put it in a cheap metal reflector (the dome shaped aluminum worklights with a clamp). It definitely helps.

The pulldown shades that everyone is talking about sound like plain old fashioned roller window shades to me, you have to apply your own mylar. I have not used mylar, although I'm sure it's fine. I have some heavy white plastic sheeting called visqueen tacked on the walls behind my lights and again, I think it helps.

I think you can use any type of light that you like, but there are provisos! Fluorescents (modern triphosphor tubes on a high frequency electronic ballast) and metal halide lights are more or less equal in efficiency today. HPS is still more efficient and you might want to choose that if you are just supplementing good natural light. Metal halide bulbs are a simple way to get 400W-1000W of light, but need to be replaced after a year or so of continuous use and can have problems with burning plants that get too close. The described fluorescents should last for about five years, you will need a lot of tubes to provide high light levels, and it can be difficult to fit in enough tubes to provide very high light intensity.

For the plants you are describing, you will probably need something like 40W of light for every square foot you wish to illuminate, maybe a little less if you are still getting good light from a window. It can be a challenge to fit enough fluorescent tubes in, you would probably need to use thin T5 tubes. Imagine maybe 10 or 15 of those and it will work just as well as a metal halide, probably better. If you decide to use fluorescents to achieve high intensity light, you may want to consider placing some of the tubes behind and at the side of the plants, not just above.

Whichever way you choose, make serious efforts to get all your light onto your plants. Use good reflectors or enclose the whole area with something bright white or reflective. When you are considering maybe 400W of light running half of every day, it is far more cost-effective to capture all the light than to lose half of it and have to run a 1000W bulb instead!

ok thanks watergal. shrubs and bulbs, thanks for the info, it was helpful. Yeah i cant afford HPS lights right now and dont have enough room for them because I have a 3 tier GH and dont have room for MH. I used to have 2 of them for my reef but when i sold it I sold them too, i wish i had them now though. well my GH is 6'x4' so i would need about 24 bulbs then. I only have 4 over them and there about a foot from the light. Im going to get 2 compact flourescent bulbs of about 100W+ to put on each end of the bottom tier where my tropicals are. and im going to surround it in mylar. so im trying to squeeze every bit of light effiency in my GH. but i wouldn't have room to put 10 or 15 bulbs but i would like too. is there an altertintive that would work for me? how would I place them on the sides and behind them? that would be a cool set up.

Heres a pic of my Vanilla:

Heres a pic of my Banana:

Here's a pic of my Lower part of my 3 tier GH with my tropicals:

{{gwi:1022165}}

Plants look good, just get them propped up next to the lights.

ok, i also added a CL to my GH tahts not in the pic.