This summer, I got my partner new plants for the apartment. She had always mentioned wanting succulents, so I went out of my way and picked up some cute potting accessories, pots, and soil and took her to a greenhouse nearby to pick out a few of her favorites.
It was an absolute blast, and keeping up with the plants as they grow and go through different cycles and seasons has been very interesting.
However, one thing has concerned us at this point in the year, and it’s how well these plants can handle the winter. Where we’re from, the weather can cause temperatures to drop to below 0, and that just won’t work with any plants in general if you’re trying to keep them alive. Whether you stuff them in cheap moving boxes for insulation or not, they won’t make it through such conditions.
So, I’ve thought about getting her a grow light for Christmas in order to keep the plants growing strong, as if summer never left. We could even rig it up to hover over our plants in some cheap moving boxes (now they work!) so that they’re well lit, warmed, and in a container that has great insulation.
I think the only thing in my way of getting one of these grow lights right here and now is needing to do a bit more research on them. For example, how big of a light do I need for 10 different succulents? Will our bonsai tree need its own grow light separate from the others? Do different plants need different temperatures being regulated so that they don’t get too hot or too cold?
I’d prefer to buy one instead of multiple, so perhaps I need to look for a longer lamp that has separate bulbs. That way, I could just buy different wattage bulbs to artificially reduce the temperature on one and not the other.
The other thing to consider is the housing on these sorts of lamps. Do they hang from something? Are they supposed to be purchased on a ledge of a table? Can they mount to a wall if needed? How grow lights are positioned and used is dependent on their shapes, temperature settings, and light emissions. There are multiple things I need to keep an eye out for and research before blindly purchasing something online that we’ll end up sending back if it’s the wrong one.
