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Originally Posted by TFdaggar03
We have been growing tomatoes from seed for the past 5 years with moderate success. We read everything that we can get our hands on to try & improve the structure of the plants & overcome the difficulty that I will get to in a moment. What we grow are Heirloom's, Hybrids, determinate & indeterminate's. Our success in the early stages is fine, but as the plants develop further & show promising growth patterns, our nemesis of tall, spindly, leggy stalks becomes evident. Foliage is adequate to the plants size, color is rich green & the overall health of the plant is good.....except for the tall, spindly stalk. We are using fluorescent fixtures w/ Agro lamps. Additionally; the temperature of our growing space is kept between 52-58 degrees, Lastly; within the space is a North facing window directly in front of the plant beds. At this point we are of the opinion that the artificial light source is not producing a quality of light adequate to promote more robust plants at an earlier stage. So the idea that we have been toying with for next season is to take a page from the marijuana growers play-book & switch to full spectrum LED's. 2 questions for the community in closing: First; is anyone else using LED's as a light source & Secondly; based on the limited information that I have posted, does anyone see problems with our current protocol & in your considered opinion, is it a light source issue at all or something else entirely? Please bare with us as we are new & while our intentions are good, tend to ask many questions. Thank you all.
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I have no issues with legginess under my high output t5's except with a few cherry varieties that i attribute to genetics. I don't think LED's would be necessary unless you plan on taking them all the way to fruit indoors (although it sounds like you are?). If you do complete the grow cycle indoors then yes, those old flouros are insufficient.
LED's are effective but you have to purchase a quality setup in excess of $1,000+ to reach the efficacy that standard HID's provide for a quarter of the price. The only problem with HID's (Metal Halide & High Pressure Sodium) is the heat that they produce.. They will most likely need to be air cooled, but then again, with temps 52-58F they would be a welcomed heat source as your current temps are a little too cool.. You should be somewhere between 65-80F during the light cycle, and around 15 degrees cooler during the dark cycle. You could get away with a good HO T5 or T8 setup for vegetative growth, but you'll want at least a 600w HPS for flowering (wattage is determined by the number of plants and size of the space you are growing in).