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firepower7

Best Kelvin Ranges for Indoor Plants

firepower
9 years ago

I have a number of large tropical plants (banana, coconut, clementine, macadamia nut, etc...) that live indoors in containers through much of the year. I finally went out and bought an indoor growing light with 3 150w metal halide lamps and 8 39w T5 fluorescent lamps. The fixture was originally used for an aquarium setup so it currently has 10,000K lamps installed but I'm thinking that might not be the best for regular plants.

There seems to be a lot of opinions online as to what the best mix is for plants including a fairly good thread here at: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lights/msg08171402961.html?14 and an nice chart from a cannabis perspective at: http://boards.cannabis.com/indoor-lighting/108095-kelvin-little-light-subject.html with a consensus seeming to be around a mix of 6500K and 3000-4000K lamps being best.

Since most of the lamps in my fixture are probably going to need to be replaced anyway, I'm thinking of configuring my light fixture as follows and would like feedback. My goal is to optimize plant growth over the winter months when I need to keep the containers indoors.

1 150w 10000K metal halide lamp
2 150w 6500K metal halide lamp
8 39w 3200K T5 fluorescent lamps

Any thoughts? Is the 10000K lamp in the middle of much value? Is there a better mix?

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