here is an idea for ya :

3 4ft open shoplights from depot with bulbs
3 4+ft Long White shelves
3 extension cords and wire cutters/nuts if they dont come with cord and plugs (hardwire)
return the gro'nslo or whatever for credit.

mount 1 fixture underneath and attached to each shelf and mount each shelf above where you want the plants displayed. make sure to mount bulbs as close or as deep as you have to in order to stay as close to center of plants as possible when mature.

I use a bookcase to prop up the pots and get them closer to the light for some of my plants. You can accomplish this a great many ways. this is just an idea.
Now I kind of feel like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike
lol
roflmao

Alright, sounds like my kind of plan. Let's just call it "Plant lighting for Dummies". If that'll work, I'll give it a try.

Thanks.

Hi Stupid :)

Now, I don't know squat about growing Caladiums, but 2,500 foot-candles seems a lot. Aren't they shade plants? I would think these would be happy in 1,000 foot-candles. I'm guessing 10" pots? That would make about ten square feet you need to light and you really need about 15,000 lumens. Boost up all my numbers if they need more light or you have bigger pots.

Normally you would be looking for efficiency and long life, but in your case you should just find the cheapest fluorescent bulbs that you can and add them up to about 200W. All that changes if you plan on using the bulbs every year or to grow other stuff, then you'd want a more efficient system that cost more up front. So you'll probably end up with a bunch of cool white 40W T12 tubes from Home Depot and the cheapest shop lights you can find. Efficiency and long life in this case would probably be a 250W metal halide lamp costing several hundred dollars.

For seedlings you can stick the tubes right on the top of the seedlings and get really intense light, but that doesn't work with big plants because the top gets fried and the bottom doesn't get enough light. You need you tubes maybe 6"-12" from the top of the leaves and you need to rig a reflector around the tubes to send all the light down onto the plants. You can buy them, but maybe you should just bend some aluminium sheet into a half-circle, or use mylar, or whatever you can lay your hands on.

A totally different approach would be to rig a temporary heated greenhouse affair outside. Sunlight is free and it seems like all you would have to do is keep it warm for a couple of months.

Hey, you dont need any lights for Caladiums! I grew mine last year on a table, in a room that gets northern light (big windows, though) and I had magnificent Caladiums. This year, I am growing 119 of them and about 30 of the babies that broke off. I started all of mine in 4 inch pots, but I read somewhere that they can be started by putting them on wet peat moss, then planted in pots later. I will do that next year.

I know you want to talk about lights here, but they are completely unneccesary for Caladiums.

the setup i described can be used for virtually anything from tomato to caladium providing you are running a plug-in timer. I apologize if i was misleading.

Here is a link that might be useful: timers etc.

I really appreciate the help. I guess I have just been pretty amazed by how complicated growing under lights can be. I had no idea.

And, Ellen, I've started some early in a room that only had a sky light in it. Like you say, that will work, but, it was fairly slow, it seemed, especially getting them warm enough to sprout. So that led to the closet idea, but is dark, so that led to the idea to stick in a grow light... then I found this forum and discovered how clueless I was on light!

Shrubs and bulbs, ha, I've been called worse. I didn't know a foot candle from a foot a couple of days ago, but, then I ran across an article on growing caladiums. It was probably more directed toward commercial operations, but that is where the number came from. But, I think I'll cheat. I'm going to follow ya'lls advice on a temp light set up, and, since my set up will likely be pretty sad, especially compared to this forum's standards, move them out as much as I can (I put them on a four shelf wire plant stand I put on a furniture roller) as soon as the temp gets up into the 70's here to let the sun do the work. Of course, our weather can be a bit erratic. We're supposed to get four inches of snow for Easter.

Height, area, wiring, ballast, a gillion types of bulbs...do you guys give phd's in lighting after enough hours on line here?