DukeRutledge's LED Experiment

[dukerutledge]

Strain: Blosser
Lighting: Easterly Facing Window with Bamboo Screen (15 Watt LED lamp coming soon)
Grow Media/Soil Mix: Local VT Intervale Organic Soil and Compost Mix
Fertilizer: Neptune Fish Emulsion
Temperature Range: 75-80 day, 60s night, will be a steady 65 when the cold weather comes
Humidity: 70-95%
Started From: Clone
Start Date: Unsure/ Aproximately 1 1/2 months old

Other Details/Images: This plant underwent a lot of stress in shipping and first arrival. The shipping process beat it up pretty good and my cats knocked it over a good three times before I transplanted to a larger pot. There was little to no growth for the first month because of the many incidents and she has finally started to grow. It also doesn't help that I waited too long to transplant and she was a bit rootbound.

I have decided to try out a small 15 watt LED lamp to supplement her afternoon lighting. After 12 the amount of sunlight drops dramatically and I've noticed a deffinite reaction. She is perky and alive looking in the morning sun, but after noon she slowely goes limp. I will be setting the LED lamp to a 12:00-7:00 time to follow the normal sun pattern. Hopefully this will give her some more life and increase her growth rate.

I hope I will be able to get some pics up soon.

[dukerutledge]

LED should arrive tomorrow or the day after. I'm excited to see what kind of effect this has. From what I've seen in other plants is that LED can create extremely fast vegitative growth, however plants often become very spindly. This may be dangerous with Salvia since she has such brittle stems, but it could provide an opportunity to get some clones.

The relatively low growth rate has continued, but I have noticed some new growth and two new nodes producing leaves. I watered today for the first time in a week and added a bit of neptunes harvest fish emulsion ( http://www.neptunesharvest.com/ ). I have been told that it works wonders and helps promote friendly bacteria in your soil. Since I am commited to organic, those bacteria will be my friend. I am still trying to find a camera that I can use, I hope to get some pre LED pictures up, so that changes can be well documented.

[hedgehog]

Keep posting, I'm really interested in how Salvia does under LED's.  LED's in general hold so much hope for the home gardener to be free from unwanted intrusion.  I'd like to see Salvia perform well under the light.  Sorry for the somewhat incomprehensible post, a FOAF just hit a bowl with 10x salvia.