Showing posts with label lighting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lighting. Show all posts

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Double lighting



The dried plant is amazingly recovering (first frame is before drying, and it's visible how even dried leaves are stiffing up)



I decided to add more lighting meanwhile. I ordered a grow lamp from China. Specs say it's "15Red+7Blue+4White+1IR+1UV" LEDs, but it's not clear if it's 8W or 28W power. I'm too lazy to measure, but to naked eye it doesn't look much brighter than my previous 5W red and blue lamp.



Also I've painted light shield white, both to increase reflection and to somewhat improve aesthetics. Here's how full installation looks like from inside now:



And from outside:


Friday, December 9, 2016

Benefits of watering

Here is animation of day-by-day progress made by two seedlings I accidentally put into one cell (just didn't notice first seed when transferred the second one)

See how growth speed increased last 2 days? That's after I really watered them. Apparently, I kept soil too dry by watering it just by condensate from lid couple times a day. This time I watered it generously and going to wait until it dries again.
Also since I installed 24H lighting, plants stopped to grow vertically and instead began to develop leaves very quickly. Some of them already have third pair of leaves, relatively large ones:

The only issue I see is some rocks turning somewhat green:

Hopefully it's something like healthy moss and is not harmful. Obviously, humidity is around 100% in the propagator so something had to grow there apart from seedlings. Can it be sphagnum?
Last couple days two more seeds germinated on filter paper. Since nothing has shown up on sphagnum since week ago nor anything ever germinated on soil, I scrapped these experimental cells and they're going to be used for transferred seedlings.

Monday, November 28, 2016

Grow light

Another germination on rockwool plug, making total of 7 seedlings.
Days are getting shorter so I installed a 5 W red and blue LED grow lamp. Description says "Red (660nm 1pcs) red (620-630nm 2pcs), blue(460nm 2pcs)". Are different wavelengths of red that important?
That's current installation overlook (pretty lilac):

I wonder, will they better off if I keep the light in 24h/day?

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Filter paper friuts

Today finally filter paper proved itself: two seeds have germinated on it:
 


This makes rockwool: 4, filter paper: 2, sphagnum and soil: 0
At least, I can't see any sprouts from seeds I initially put on soil.
Yesterday's guys are looking healthy and I even cal see microscopic roots branching from main stem (given that's not mold):

Photos are blurred, but keep in mind visible stem in seedling above is hardly more than 1mm tall.
It's cloudy today so I decided to temporarily install a 3W white led lamp to improve lighting. More advanced lamps are on their way.
This is how the installation is looking like now: