I'm Still Here!

Perhaps you’re wondering about the lack of recent posting activity. I’ve been dealing with health problems, the most recent a bad fall on my daily power walk in Balboa Park. Silly me.

I’m a very lucky old dude that I didn’t break anything and am slowly recovering. The humorous part is that I have an ugly bruise on my right thigh in the exact shape of my digital camera. My fanny pack with the camera in it was the impact point. What a way to make a digital imprint.

There’s a significant backlog of stuff to post and I’ll get to it in the coming days. Meantime there are plants in the Greenscaper Consumer Lab that are crying out for water. Hauling water isn’t exactly what I want to be doing right now but there’s no escaping it.

Thanks for your interest in indoor plants and your patience. Stay tuned!

A Desert on Your Desktop

Click to enlarge. Here is an idea if you’d like a visual escape from work on your desktop, workspace or anywhere else for that matter. It is the same planter pictured here. To my eyes, it is similar to a lighted aquarium. The keys to success are sub-irrigation and a 27-watt compact fluorescent desklamp.

As we know, cactus and succulents are high light requirement plants. I have set out to prove that you can maintain desert plants on your desktop using the artificial light from one of these natural daylight lamps. If you place the planter bowl directly under the lamp there will be about 2,000 foot-candles (20,000 lux) over the top of the plants.

Note: Position the lamp even closer to the tops of the plants than I show in the picture. One to two inches would be better.

An excellent method of light management is to connect the lamp to a timer. Using a timer, you can extend daylight in the desert beyond your work hours. However, if you’re burning the candle at both ends in your office maybe you don’t need a timer.

Did you know that when a website or houseplant book recommends a minimum of 100 foot-candles it really means 1,200 f.c. candles per day? Light for plants is based on a 12-hour day. Unfortunately, authors rarely footnote this fact.

Using artificial light, you can increase the minimum daily requirement by leaving the lamp on longer. For example, 100 f.c. x 16 hours = 1,600 f.c. divided by 12 hours = 133 foot candles. Using this method, you’ve increased the amount of light by one third.