Aerogarden experience, advice?

[beefsteak]

My widowed aunt lives out in the boonies in a small unincorporated town. She raises canaries and button quail for a hobby. One of the grandkids gave her an Aerogarden so she could raise romaine lettuce for her birds. And she's asked me a question Aerogarden won't answer, and I haven't been successful finding an answer for her on google.

Here's hoping someone can help.

She's got one of Aerogarden's 6 hole units, and it has 2 rounded CFLs that are inserted into the AG hood.

She's wondering how to calculate how much light (Kelvin) it is getting. She said her research shows that it may be as low as 2700 Kelvin, or as high as 6500 Kelvin.

Her question is this: if the bulbs are 2700 kelvin and they are both on at the same time, is the total light available to the plant now 5400K? or Just 2700K?

Thanks for any help if anyone knows how to answer this.


beefsteak

[big country]

Kelvin isn't a measure of "how much" light. You want to look at the watts for "how much". For example a 100w light is going to provide more light then a 60w.

Kelvin is a measure of the "color" (spectrum) of the light. Certain plants prefer different colors. A 10,000K light is a white light like a white LED. A 2,700k light is a yellow light like an incandescent bulb, and a 20,000K light is a blue colored light commonly used in the saltwater aquarium hobby (Actinic).

Two 2700K lights still provide 2700K light spectrum to the plants. It is common in the aquarium hobby to mix different "color" bulbs to provide a better spectrum of light to the plants.

If you're using regular "curly" CFLs you dont have much choice about color, I'm not familiar with the AEROgarden so I'm not sure what bulbs they use. Ideally it would be T5 Flourescent as there are many many options with different spectrum bulbs in that format. I'll provide more info when I get home and can do some more research into the issue.

[Dogman]

http://www.compostguy.com/images/aerogarden1.jpg

Not totally sure, but I think the light output does not double, but the light coverage would be improved. Two say 60w bulbs burning will use 120 watts of power but will not be brighter or have a light output equal to a 120 watt bulb. Same with color. With her using two 2700 kelvin bulbs the light color will still be 2700 kelvin. But you will have more light coverage.

[big country]

I'm pretty sure you can double the wattage. 2 60W bulbs will certainly grow more/better plants then 1 60w. I'm saying this from my experience with live plants in the aquarium hobby.

4 bulb T5 hoods are better then 2 bulb T5 hoods assuming the same length (which determines watts). In the aquarium hobby which plants you can grow is based on your "watts per gallon (WPG)". High light plants need higher WPG. So a 24" hood with 2 T5 (24W) bulbs produces 48W total where a 2 bulb hood would produce 96W total allowing you to grow higher light plants. All that to say, you can double the watts but not the kelvins.