Garden Series: Greenhouse Gardening in the Winter, P9
- Shidonna Raven
- Jan 3
- 2 min read
Source: Donna Balzer
Photo Source: Unsplash,
Note that commercial growers use the big Halogen or Metal Halide lights but these are expensive energy hogs and they give off a lot of heat as well as light so are usually hung from the roof of commercial greenhouses above warm season crops such as cucumbers or tomatoes growing in the winter. Home greenhouse gardeners usually adopt LED’s or T5 lights because they are inexpensive to run and stay relatively cool even though they do need to be within 30 cm (12″) of the crop to be most effective. Regular overhead florescent lights, installed just below the roof of the greenhouse, will give the gardener enough light to move about in the greenhouse in the evening, but unlike metal halides, they will not give the struggling plants growing on the ground enough light to grow because they are simply too far away.
Greenhouse crops take time to mature, and unless you are simply eating the first small leaves of a crop in your greenhouse it will take six weeks of good light to grow a radish, four months to grow lettuce and five months to grow a cabbage in the winter. Crops like cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts will take 4-8 months to mature and produce the edible part of the plant (namely the broccoli head, the cauliflower head and the Brussels sprouts) when grown as a low-light winter crop. Extra lights and heat speeds up the timeline for growing somewhat but to be safe, pick a longer harvest date just in case the roof gets snow covered or there is an extended arctic blast of cold air outside.
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