Getting Ready to Grow Under Lights

Perhaps the most basic fact about green plants is their need for light.* Without light, photosynthesis can’t occur and plants are unable to make the food they need to survive (and produce the oxygen we need to breathe in the process). Different kinds of plants have differing light needs. Some, like plants that have adapted to the dim light reaching a forest floor, may prosper under very low levels of light. Examples of these kinds of plants abound in the foliage plants we often grow as “houseplants” on our windowsills. But most of the plants we grow for food need a much higher intensity of light to thrive, which is why vegetable gardens do best in full sun, and why the seedlings of food plants we start indoors need bright light as soon as they emerge from the soil. read more