Black Light & Plant Growth

Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we're going to talk about how does black light affect plant growth. Now I remember growing up and everyone had black lights in their bedrooms and it was just really exciting at Halloween to have the neon colors that the black light produce and is just really fun. So now when you're growing your plants, there's all types of theories as to what type of light is the best for them and it's pretty much found that blue lights or halide lights are great when plants are first growing because that's most like the natural sunlight in the spring. But to produce flowers, you really want the red light because the red light is closer to the summer sunlight you want that intense sunlight. So the theory goes that most plants want the full spectrum of light. So using black light alone is not enough. A lot of times they won't bloom real well because they're not getting the intense red lights. So it will help a bit and you probably could grow a plant using black light alone if there's no other light source, it will probably still survive but it probably won't thrive. Whereas using a full spectrum light or fluorescent light just above your plants, they have found that's the best light that you can use. And in that way you'll get the full spectrum of light and then your plants won't be in the dark and they won't just get that black light, they want all the light.