Light your Plants Cool and Warm

Combine Cool White and Warm White tubes in the same lamp for good results with most houseplants. Source: edisontechcenter.org

It isn’t necessary to buy expensive horticultural tubes to light your houseplants: using the two most widely available fluorescent tubes, which are also the cheapest, will give you results close to or even better than the 20 to 40$ horticultural varieties. Just mix one Cool White tube (CW) and one warm white huge (WW) and you’ll give  your plants lighting of a sufficient quality for them to grow and bloom very well. Many people who produce plants to compete in plant shows use the cool white/warm white combination.

If you’re growing plants under LED lights, the same applies: look for Cool White and Warm White equivalents.

For great plants, just install a two-tube lamp 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 cm) above your plants and use a timer so they’ll have 14 to 16 hours of light per day. This will convince them they’re living an eternal summer, with the lush growth and abundant flowering that ensue.