I don’t grow a lot in the way of vegetables, just a few tomato plants and herbs this year. It’s mostly because I have very few full sun locations in my yard. However, I do adore flowers of every kind, and spend most of my spring and summer tending those. We had our first freeze last week, so I brought in my healthiest annuals to attempt overwintering. It’s pretty much an experiment for me to see how many things can survive until next May. If anyone has advice for me, I’m all ears. I don’t know how much to water or how many hours of sunlight to try. I’ve got a sunroom that I’m using for some of these, but the rest are in the basement that has some natural light. I’m considering putting in grow light bulbs, but have no idea of how long to leave them on. Suggestions?
Well, I don’t do much with flowers. Back when I had flowers indoors, they always died. I know now, that I probably overwatered them. Some plants are sensitive to the length of day, and others are not.
I have a patio door that faces southwest. So it doesn’t get much in the morning. When the sun goes down, I turn on the grow light till about 8 pm, which is when the summertime sun would be going down. I use a full spectrum light, since I’m growing lemons and tomatoes, and endive. I need to plant a pepper plant, but haven’t figured out where to put it yet.
Tomatoes Peppers, and potatoes are all solanacious (need sunlight) plants; 8-10 hours of sunlight to stay alive, 12-15 hours to keep blooms and set fruit.
The light needs to be "Full Spectrum" which includes blue light wavelength, which is necessary for photosynthesis (converting light energy to sugars).
If plants become spindley, the plants are telling you that they need more light, they are 'reaching' for more light,
and will grow towards the light (advantage of an adjustable overhead full spectrum lighting system).
When plants come indoors, they will go through a period of 'shock', but should recover with a week or so.
Reduce the amount of water when plants are brought indoors, unless they are still fruiting; throughout the winter, keep the reduced amount of water,
or manually mist, or increase humidity by placing pots over small rocks set in shallow water (sorta a humidity blanket).
Flowering plants are more adaptive to bringing indoors; fruiting plants are 'more pickey' about environment, and need pollination by insects, or by hand.
A closed environment is more susceptible to insect invasion and fungal diseases; close monitoring is advised as is an elevated position,
since cold drafts occur closer to the ground as is accidental ambient air currents.
Light (full spectrum) and stable temperature is necessary for overwintering plants indoors.