Why not grow your own year round in doors?

The rise of gourmet home cooking as well as the popularity of fresh, home-raised and locally-grown foods has increased demands for fresh herbs.

With SunBlaster's modern advances in grow lighting and self-contained indoor growing systems, raising herbs inside a small corner or counter top in  your home is easier than ever and can add year-round flavors, scents, and enjoyment your life.

Fresh healthy food  is just days away!

The benefits of growing under lights are hard to ignore.

There  simply is no better way to grow an abundance of stocky, green seedlings.

If you grow flowering plants indoors, such as orchids, African violets, citrus and hibiscus, lights will keep them blooming almost year-round. A wintertime harvest of herbs and salad greens can also be grown with our SunBlaster T5HO and CFL lighting kits and accessories.

There are plentiful reasons to grow herbs indoors: basil pesto, rosemary chicken, maple and marjoram-roasted turkey, fresh oregano pizza sauce, tarragon salmon, cilantro-flavored salsas and spicy chive dip.

Sunlight contains the complete spectrum of light including all colors of the rainbow: red through yellow to blue and violet.

Plants use the full spectrum for photosynthesis, although red and blue light seem to be most critical.

Red light stimulates vegetative growth and flowering, but if a plant gets too much red light, it will become tall and spindly.

Blue light regulates plant growth, which makes it ideal for growing foliage plants and short, stocky seedlings that will thrive when transplanted into your chosen growing medium or system.

• For propagation & growing use SunBlaster 6400K lamps.
• For flowering plants use SunBlaster 2700K lamps.
• For specialty applications such as essential oil production use 10,000K lamps.

Botanists typically  divide plants into three categories relating to their preferred day length: short-day, long-day or day-neutral.

We can apply this to indoor growing as well.

Short-day plants, such as chrysanthemums, kalanchoe, azaleas and begonias, will thrive on less than 12 hours of light per day. In fact, these plants must usually go through a series of even shorter days before they will set buds and flower.

Long-day plants require at least 14 to 18 hours of light each day. Most vegetables and garden flowers are long-day plants, and when they don't receive enough light they get pale and leggy.

Day-neutral plants, including foliage plants, geraniums, coleus and African violets, are usually satisfied with 8 to 12 hours of light all year-round.

No matter what types of plants you are growing indoors, you must be sure to give them a rest. When it's dark, plants respirate, which is an important part of their growth process. The balance of rest time to active growth time affects many biological processes, including the growth rate, and the setting of buds and fruit.

Rotate your plants each week.

The light from a fluorescent bulb is more intense at the center of the bulb than it is at the ends.

Clean your fluorescent bulbs each month.

Dust and dirt can dramatically decrease the amount of light emitted.

Replace fluorescent tubes when the ends darken.

That means the tube is old and the light output may be less than half of a new bulb.

Place your hand where the light hits the foliage.

If you feel any warmth, the light is too close.