Grouping your indoor edibles by temperature preferences is important - especially if you're growing inside grow tents. Remember that cool-season crops, such as lettuce, greens, dill, and peas, may not withstand the heat build-up inside an enclosed grow space or grow tent unless it is artificially cooled.

Your heat-loving plants, such as tomatoes, peppers, and cannabis, can handle tighter spaces with warmer HID lighting.

Gardening Under Lights Book!

Grow lighting can be used for large set ups or for individual houseplants. If you need lighting for single plants in your home or office, simply use a mobile, easy to install spotlight LED.

There are many types of spotlight LED grow lights. Full spectrum lights will emit a white colored light. Dual band, or mixed band, LEDs typically emit a pink-colored light.

Gardening Under Lights Book

Don’t overdo it when selecting the size of your new container. Replant a 2-inch seedling plug or cutting into a 4-inch diameter pot. If you plant a very small seedling in a much bigger container, it may drown in too much water held by larger soil volume or it could dry out as water moves away from the root ball to the edges of the container.

Always choose growing containers that have drainage holes in the bottom, or porous fabric grow pots that allow water and air to permeate.

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Fluorescent fixtures are relatively small, and you can mount them to all sorts of structures. If you have only a small space on the kitchen counter under the cabinets, you can mount an individual fluorescent fixture for one T5 tube right there. This is a perfect spot for a few leafy kitchen herbs, such as basil or chives.

I designed these custom kitchen grow shelves to keep fresh herbs handy in my kitchen. I had an electrician run the lamp wires into the wall to connect to power and mounted a light switch to turn them off and on.

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Some fluorescent grow lamps are available with spectrums weighted to specific color ranges, such as red or blue.

Fluorescent grow lamps are available in distinctively warmer spectrums, as well as full-spectrum forms that provide a better balance of light across the entire PAR light spectrum, which allow you to grow plants more effectively through their vegetative and flowering phases.

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The length of time you leave your lights on is just as important as the type and intensity of light you provide. Many plants are photoperiodic, meaning they require different durations of light and darkness to shift into different phases of growth or development, such as producing flower buds or forming bulbs.

Most plants require a minimum of 10 hours of light each day for active growth. While your plant might survive with less, it may go into a dormant state if you leave it at that photoperiod for an extended time.

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Many indoor growers choose to skip the soil and grow their plants in hydroponic, aeroponic, or aquaponic systems. While growing hydroponically will reduce some of the pressure of checking your plants daily for water needs, you will have monitor the system.

The most common form of hydroponic system is the nutrient film technique (NFT), which involves growing plants with their roots directly suspended in water. Other methods include wick, water culture, ebb and flow, drip, and aeroponics.

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The light source must be very close to your seedlings as they germinate, as near as 3 or 4 inches from the seeds as they emerge from the soil. These tiny seedlings are too far from the grow lights above – they will soon become too stretched if not moved closer to the light.

Ratcheted cords or chains that allow you to move light fixtures up and down will enable you to place your lamps very close to seedlings as they are just emerging, then lift the light source as they grow.

Gardening Under Lights Book