Question

LED Grow Lamp  

LED Grow Lamp burn spo   Hi Jeff!

I want to give my opinion about these LED Grow Lamp, I remember you once mentioned you were trying these too in your nursery to see how it is... Well, personally I have been using 2 30x30cm 15W LED lamps (red and blue led) for around 6 months on top of my lowland Nepenthes terrarium. Together, the two lamps consume 30W instead of 150W for my previous HPS lamp, don磘 heat up like the HPS, and I think the Nepenthes are pretty about it, they do develop well, at least I have a feeling that they are more producing more pitchers actually! I don磘 have 30C?air temp as before, but still fine with 23-24 C?for lowlanders.

Although the LED are not really producing heat, I noticed that some Nepenthes rafflesiana leaves that are as close as < 1 cm do have some kind of burn spots. See on the attached picture. Interesting is that, previously my HPS really burned leaves away, preventing them to grow further, this time it seems that  only the part under the LED is burnt, and just the center part of the LED is burning the leave, around the brown part the leave looks like it had some very nice coloration, some more distant leaves used to have ideal distance and have good coloration, without spots. Well that磗 for my LED experience, quite good.

Since my Drosophyllum and Drosera regia seeds haven磘 sprout yet, I have been thinking to place 1 LED lamp on top of the pot. It should be far enough (around 1 inch) not to harm the seeds, but very close enough to give them plenty of light. I was hoping to support germination that way, as soon as leaves develop, I can just put them outside under natural light (since next weekend we should get full sun and at least 16-17C?. How do you think about this idea?

Second thing is my terrarium is too small...I am really looking forward to get my own property/house with a garden to setup a warm frame! Until then I want to grow my lowlanders as robust as possible, but these, especially rafflesiana, bicalcarata and truncata are growing "quite fast" either in leaves size or in height. You can see on my Nepenthes picture that new emerging leaves are growing horizontally since the glas-plate on top of the terrarium prevents them to grow higher... So what should I do? Cut the stem? I mean that I once read that if you cut back Nepenthes, they could produce new off-shots on the ground and become more "bushy" and lower in growth. Is it? Also I was thinking to take out bicalcarata to another small terrarium as the broad leaves prevent smaller species to get any light at all :-/

Thanks for your comments Jeff and have a nice weekend and great Easter Holiday. Jacob did a good job with the latest video, you Sarracenias are going crazy with tons of flowers! I hope the Californian droughts don磘 affect your nursery too much! Wishing you guys all the best.

Regards from a Belgian in Germany,

JP

Answer
Hi JP,

We have some similar LED units we use in the house for a couple plants and have had similar results.  We have much more powerful units in our greenhouse that we've had move much higher away from plants because they were too powerful.  LED's are deceptive since they don't give off much heat, but are strong in the narrow photosynthetic spectrum of plants.

I would be cautious with your seedlings.  Maybe move it to two inches away until you see how they respond.  I would keep your plants inside until the weather warms enough to leave them outside for the season.  Moving plants back and forth is always bad for them.

With your Nepenthes you can definitely cut them back.  This problem comes with the territory when you have a terrarium and lowlanders that are known to be fast, big growers.  They will create shoots from their dormant nodes and from the roots sometimes.  Our nursery friend in Hawaii likes to have fun with folks wanting to grow Nepenthes in terrariums this way:  http://lhnn.proboards.com/thread/1414/grow-aquarium

Thank-you for the Easter greeting.  It was a partial day off for me since I hadn't had one in two weeks, Jacob had to work.  It 's spring!  We haven't been as affected by the drought as Southern Oregon and California.  Our snow pack in the mountains is low, but rainfall has been need normal.  That's what affects us directly here, but since rainfall has been good, our ground water is fine, (we get our water from a well) and we should have plenty of water for summer.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.growcarnivorousplants.com