Expert: Christopher Littrell - 5/7/2010

Question
QUESTION: Hello Christopher. awhile back you told me something about why my ventrata's pitchers where shrinking and gave me lighting advice. i need help with artificial lighting. I live in an apartment in western new York and i have absolutely horrible window lighting. i have very small windowsills that cant hold up my plant and the ones that would get light are overshadowed by neighboring trees and houses. So my only real option is artificial light. Could you please give me the specifics of what i would need to keep my plants(one nepenthes ventrata medium height and an infant ramispina) happy they are currently only under compact florescents and it doesn't seem to be enough. Thank You!

ANSWER: Hello Steven,

I understand your concern with compact florescent lights. Nepenthes are one genera that usually get too big for compact florescent lights rather quickly. I had a one foot tall N. sanguinea in a South facing window with a single additional compact florescent light of 100 watt equivalence and it had trouble making pitchers until I added 40 watt florescent shop lights over it.

My setup for growing Nepenthes as of now is a desk, shelf, or table with a shelf overhanging it several feet over the growing surface. I hung three sets of 40 watt florescent shop lights from the shelf so that they cover a four foot long by 15 inch wide area and then placed my Nepenthes under it. I adjusted the height of the plants with whatever was at hand until I had them about 6-8 inches from the lights. As they grow, I can adjust the height of the lights by modifying the chain length or by lowering the pots a few inches. Under that kind of lighting, they get over 18000 lumens of light intensity with 6 cool white tubes and produce colorful pitchers and leaves. My only problem now is pruning the plants so that they do not overgrow the area I have set up for them. The entire cost approximation would be about 30 or so dollars and you can add in a light timer for 16 hour times in the growing season and lessen the daylengths down to about 12-14 hours in the winter. Since such lighting is efficient, it hardly even shows up on my energy bill and actually helps keep the room a little warmer in cooler periods. If it gets too warm, a ceiling fan and central air unit will move the warm air around efficiently enough, but really, such lighting is relatively cool, only adding a couple degrees to the normal room temperature.

Christopher

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: At this time regretfully i cant accommodate such long lighting fixtures. my plant is only about a foot tall is there any temporary alternative. im pretty confidant that in the near future i will have a bigger livingspace but now its pretty cramped. If there is no alternative then i could try and use those lights anyway but it would be rather inconvenient at this time.

Answer
Hello Steven,

The main problem you are running into is coverage for larger plants. It often is not enough to have one side of the plant in a small window and shade on the other side with only a couple hours of actual light. Similarly, compact florescent bulbs only cover a small area and, individually, need to be placed quite close to a small plant to do any good. Even then, they burn much hotter than shop lights, making such close placement problematic if the heat builds too much near the plant. You can use several compact florescent bulbs of 100 to 150 watt equivalence from different angles. Perhaps placing 2 or 3 such higher intensity bulbs about 6-8 inches from the leaves in a well ventilated area would be helpful. Place one directly above the plants, and one or two others at an angle above and to one or two sides of the plants.Try to position the lights and plants so that the light is covering as many leaves and pitchers as possible while trying to keep heat levels down. After a couple weeks of growth, look for color and pitcher growth from new leaves. If the lights still seem inadequate, you will need to add one or more additional compacts from different angles. It is intensity, coverage, and length of time that all add up to produce enough light for plants to grow properly. I tend to rely on shop lights after some short lived use of compacts. The compacts simply require too much work to get intensity and coverage and lower heat levels for larger plants. Your small N. rampispina may be fine under one such compact, but the N. ventrata simply needs more light over a wider area.

Christopher