hello everyone-
winter is coming here in maine and i had to move my little meyer lemon tree indoors, and now i need to get it some proper lighting....there's always something or other i need to do for my little lemon tree. anyway, i am hearing different things about what to use. the supplier (of my tree) says to go with a full spectrum flourescent but i hear good things about the San Agro Lamp and of course there are the metal halides & high pressure sodiums which get good marks. what do you guys like to use? thanks!

I strongly recommend a Metal Halide Lamp. Full spectrum fluorescents are for seedlings.

We,,
from my point of experience:
Metall Halide lamps require much power, but not much is transformed into light.
fluorescent tubes are mch better, because transforming most electric power into light, especially with eletronic control devices.
fluorescents are given with numbers for their color, usually here in Germany. So cold white is 840 and warm white is 830, a color compareable to daylight is 860/65 and a color like the sky on a mointaintop is called sky blue and is 880.

As more higher the numbers, as more blue light the fluorescent lamp will emit. As lower the number as more red light the lamp spends to the tree.

8hundert numbers show, that the lamp has three color peaks, one in blue, one in red and one in green, and the color number shows, how these peaks will mix up to the visible light.
As a computer monitor, which still has three color point of Red-Green and Blue, making the RGB Technology able to exhibit nearly all visible colors, also those three peak fluorescent lamps use this technology.
Tubes with 9hundert numbers are also available, but instead of three peaks, they have five. But the get more electric power into heat, so their light emittation is less than those of the 800 series.

So for comparing light emittation of several lamps, the lumen per Watt value is a good value to compare most of the available lamps. It represents how much light of all put in electric power is transformed into light.
For example a Osram Lumilux fluorescent of the 830 color will have a value of aprox. 70 Lumen per Watt in the T8 Technology.
A Lumilux 830 in T5 Technology wil only emit 62 Lumen per Watt.
And a Mercury Halide Lamp will only emit 30 up to 40 Lumen per Watt.

So a Mercury Halide Lamp will be require twice the power of a fluorescent to emit the same amount of light.
So a normal light bulb will only emit 12 Lumen per Watt, and Halide bulbs up to 20 Lumen per Watts, so a comon fluorescent tube will spend about 3 time more light at the same electric power.

But the absolute light power comes from metal halide lamps with ceramic emitors. The Powerball or PowerStar Lamps of Osram.
The Powerball HCI of Osram will emit 75 Lumen per Watt and the Osram PowerStar HQI will emit about 65 Lumen per Watt. So the HQI lamps will compete with the fluorescents, but because of better color range, usually fluorescents were used.
The HCI lamps come with a color of cool white, compareable to fluorescent color of 840 and exhibit the best performance and are now the choice for illumination of large green houses.
Because most of the electric power you give those plants is transformed into light....

For us at home, usually the broad range of fluorescent tubes is the best way for plant illumination. We can choose a color of 830, 840 or 860 which matches our eye, and can be sure, it matches also the plants desire, not as good as sunlight, but better than nothing or something else.
And we save much power, if we know which to use.

Here is a good web site, that has a ton of information on plants and lighting. http://www.progressivegardens.com/growers_guide/lighting.html

thanks you guys!

Steve, thank you for your posting. It really does not concern me what the expense is of operating a light or the amount of power the light uses. It is such a small amount of money anyway. I prefer the use of a HID light source, as my concern is about the quantity of light. Take care.

Milett,

I do not want to discusse about money.
.
I look how effective a lamp is. I am an electrician, so I do not compare lamps by watt or size, I look what's going in and what I get out.
So in terms, if you want to use HID (High Intensity discharge) Lamps, you do.
But we must compare HID Lamps, because they differ.
In word, we have several HID families, and not all can compete with a modern flourescent tubular lamp....
So the least effecite lamp is the Osram HQL, a Mercury Vapor Low Pressure Lamp... It works with only 40 Lumen per Watt.... and that's not what I call effective, because a tublar flourescent lamps of the Lumilux type has up to 80 lumen per Watt.... So only half of the light by the same amount of power you have to push in?
Is that realy HID ?? No, not realy, as we will see tubular lamps as NOT HID technlogy.
So, HQL are sold, even als plant lamps, but their light isn't well, it's not much and so you will add more heat radiation from the ballast and the bub to the air, as bring light to the plant's leaves...
So HQL: No way, even if you call it HID!
It's simply a fact, and what I want to have, is not 6 dozen of bulbs above the plants and a temperature like a bakery, I want to have less bulbs, less heat radiation from illumination and as much light as possible.
So HQL won't match these terms and any point.

So, real HID we get with Sodium Vapor Lamps, best with high Pressure, like the Osram Vialox NAV or Philips SON-T.
Unfortunately, the do not match our demands in the spectral light radiation, because the nearly complete yellow orange light, emitted by those lamps, does not realy fit to the demands of the plants for photosyntesis... so even die Philips SON-T Agro with 30% more blue light radiation does not realy make it up.
The SON-T Agro is compareable to the Osram Plantastar.
Both are Sodium Vapor Lamps, and realy more for canabis and flower growers, as for most home citrus growers....

So now we enter the section of high pressure metall halide lamps.
Usually Osram has two different types of those lamps, one with a quartz flare unit and one with a modern ceramic flare unit.
So the typical Osram HQI is a quartz type, which matches our demands in color and light output. With about 3000 Kelvin and up to 5200 Kelvin is comes close to common daylight and the spectral color range is good, but still with peaks in the for sodium typical yellow orange color.
Up to 80 lumen per Watt you can get, and therefore now these lamps starting outbeating the flourescent tubular lamps in Lumn per Watt output and color range.
Now we got the first real HID lamps which fits in our demands....

But the best is to come:

with the Osram HCI a new aera of metal halide technology was born, because their ceramic flare was able to widstand much higher temoratures and thus create much more and intense light. So output of more than 100 Lumen per Watt are recorded, by only light changes in spectral range, but beeing compareable to daylight.
The Osram brand Radium has a Spectral picture here for their Radium RCI-TS lamp, which comes with up to 91 Lumen per Watt...

So, if we compare lamps, the money one has to spend and one has to pay during runtime differs, not only from the point of energy, also from the point of light output.
And I prefer to spend my money in efficient light, rather in expensive lights, because one calls them 'high efficient'.... So much 'High output' Lamps exist, but a simple look to the technical details tels the whole story.
Does the spectral light fit? Does the light color, given by Kelvin, fit?
Is the Lumen per Watt value more than 40 Lumen per Watt?
These are the points we might think about, and because with that values, we can choose the right light, with less lamps but the desired light amount to spend our plants....
And that's why I choosed a flourescent lamp, because one tube, and I got enough light for two plants, whereas I had before mount two HQL bulbs... So I do not waste time, energy and money, after this decission and the plants... Well they do better than before....

So if we discuse about light, we do not discuse about decissions.. everyone is free to do his own, we discuse and compare only technical values... that's what I did and that's how my posting should be read... but with this technical values, you can do it on your own, and check up you decission, and choice, if you will install your next lamp.... and if not, nothing the be blamed for...

Oh, there is a picture, I can recomend:


He's got it from
3M.com Lighting and I found it on Long Life for Art, Light technology for museums and galleries

When I got caught up with banana fever, I used to keep my bananas and specialty citruses in the garage using many types of growlights. After accounting for the electric bills, I had surmised that I could have replaced the entire sets of plants. So I gave up on it. One season, I overwinter all of my bananas outside the whole season. Out of the more than 85 cultivars, there were 2 dozen cold hardy ones that are cold hardy at their pseudostems. Those are the ones that have big chances of fruiting in our zone 9 climate.

But if the cost of electric bills more than justifies the cost of the plants and their stage of growth, the grow lights would be a good solution for your situation. I think I still have a lot of those growlights sitting around somewhere in my garage now.

Very lively discussion. I am learning a lot.

Joe:
Will you be so kind to run your notes again as to the order of your banana hardiness. Ones that stood the winter in your area.
I lost all my data to the laptop that was stolen from me including all the pictures that I've taken in the past.

Benny

Here you go Benny!

This is my $2,000 lesson. Spent that much just to find out which of the fruiting ones will have potential. Those not listed, you will have to do other tricks to let them fruit.

Pseudostem Cold Hardy Cultivars
California Gold
Dwarf Brazilian
Thousand Fingers
Monkey Fingers
Orinoco
Brazilian
Golden Rhinohorn
Dwarf Orinoco
Misi Luki
Mysore
Namwah
Rajah Puri
Manzano
Ice Cream
Gold Finger
Dwarf Namwah
Sweetheart (FHIA 3)
Namwah Pearl
Praying Hands
Saba
Cardaba
Williams
Belle
Valery

Joe, what was the minimum temperatures that the listed bananas experienced, and the duration?

We've had about 46 frosty nights, 31 nights below freezing, one week every night below 25 deg F for at least 4 hours, and one night that dipped around 22 deg F for about 2 hours during the testing.

Thanks a lot again Joe. Now I know which one to protect.

You should check out a website.xxx-xxx.com it is a commerical website that caters to selling police conficated items from all over the USA. It has a little bit of everything i.e. books, clothes, waterheaters for your house etc. It always has a large selection of used grow lights at a very good price. Some items are new or slightly used some are junk. It is based it appears to be Orlando FL. Check it out you may be able to get what you are looking for at a good price. All items are auction pricing. You may want to pick up a car to ship it back to Maine!