Lights Plants And Growth

Fertilizers are a plant's vitamins

To put things in perspective, using fertilizers properly is an important part of gardening, but it is almost never a matter of life and death.

First, despite the common use of the terms "plant food" and "feeding," fertilizers are not food. Plants make their own food through a remarkable process called photosynthesis, which uses the energy of the sun to create sugar from carbon dioxide and water.

If you need to think in terms of plants eating something, their energy source is light and they build their bodies from air and water.

In addition to the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen that plants get from air and water, they also require 13 elements that are essential to their ability to carry on their life processes and be healthy.

Rather than thinking of them as food, a better analogy would be to think of them as vitamins. These 13 essential elements are the same for all plants, and they are almost always absorbed by plants from the soil through their roots.

All 13 nutrients are present to some degree in average soil.

Nutrient deficiencies

Sometimes, however, one or more may not be present in sufficient quantities for a plant to grow and function at its full potential.

On occasion, a plant may be so deprived of an essential element that it actually gets sick (as when azaleas or gardenias get iron chlorosis).

That's where fertilizers come in. A fertilizer is a substance added to the plant's environment that provides one or more of the essential elements.

The essential elements obtained from the soil are divided into three groups, based on the relative amounts of the elements used by plants -- but it's important to remember that all the essential elements are equally important.

The micronutrients (or trace elements) include boron, chlorine, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum and zinc. They are used in very tiny amounts and are rarely deficient. However, in the alkaline soils south of Lake Pontchartrain, acid-loving plants have difficulty absorbing iron, and iron deficiencies are fairly common in plants like gardenias and blueberries.

The secondary elements -- calcium, magnesium and sulfur -- are used in larger amounts. The soils of the south shore are generally rich in these elements, although sulfur may be added to make the soil more acid. The native soils north of the lake, though, are often low in calcium and magnesium and quite acid. Gardeners on the north shore may need to add dolomitic lime to their gardens to provide calcium and magnesium and make the soil less acid.

Name Light | Cooking

In recent times, LED grow lights are becoming very popular for hydroponic gardening due to various advantages. One of the major benefits of this lighting system is low cost of maintenance. The technology of LED grow lights is to emit only the color spectrum required for the plant photosynthesis. Hence, they consume less amount of electricity in comparison to the traditional lighting system and other grow lights. On an average, a LED grow light consumes less than 5 watts of power for operation.

In LED grow lights, wide-spectrum red light and narrow-spectrum blue light of specific wavelengths are configured in a particular manner. The red spectrum supplements natural sun rays, whereas the blue spectrum makes an ideal light for the plant growth. Thus, LED grow lights provide ideal light conditions for the better growth of all types of plants and/or crops. In addition, this lighting system contains no toxic mercury, which is used in fluorescent lights and metallic vapor.

There are several models of LED lights, each suitable for various types of plants and their successive stages. For example, some LED grow lights are designed for vegetative growth, whereas some are specially configured to promote flowering and/or blooming. Speaking about the installation, LED grow lights should be hanged or mounted in hydroponic gardens, as per the manufacturer’s guidelines. While using LED grow lights , the height should be maintained in such a way that it covers the maximum plantation area.

Another advantage of LED grow lights is the less production of heat. With minimum heat production, water requirement also reduces due to less evaporation. The problem of high temperature root damage and plant dehydration is thus solved by using LED grow lights. Hence, with this lighting system, there is no need for installation of fans or cooling ducts.

As this grow lights are available readily with plugs, no ballast is required for the initiation and regulation of the lights. Thus, there is no problem for ballast burning and/or replacement, which is so in case of fluorescent bulbs. LED grow lights are long-lasting; a superior quality may last for 10-12 years. Overall, LED grow lights are easier to maintain and cheaper than other lighting systems used for hydroponic gardening.

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The standard cyclopedia of horticulture, a discussion for the amateur, and the professional and commercial grower, of the kinds, characteristics and methods of cultivation of the species of plants grown in the regions of the United States and Canada for ornament, for fancy, for fruit and for vegetables; with keys to the natural families and genera, descriptions of the horticultural capabilities of the states and provinces and dependent islands, and sketches of eminent horticulturists

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