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I read that for greens like salad you can provide supplementary light hours (during night time) in order to increase the growing speed. Some species even tolerate continuous lighting.

Is the same possible for strawberries? I'm not sure as the daily light cycle is supposed to trigger flowering and fruiting...

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  • Are you talking about salad greens being grown outside and then someone adds artificial lighting and is saying this increases growth speed? So then you are wondering if your strawberries outside would grow faster with artificial lighting? Is this to increase the light or extend the light during nights? I'd say add fans to blow the O2 off and around the leaves so that more CO2 can be produced. Way more production. Adding a source of CO2 is also another great way to increase production. Plants need rest my opinion. Periods of darkness. What are you doing for fertilization?
    – stormy
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 20:26
  • I'll edit my questions as I mean greenhouses where we extend the lighting period during nights. CO2 injection and nutrients misting to the roots are also expected but my question is here is about light and how the day/night ratio can be optimized
    – Vincent Teyssier
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 20:29
  • As long as you have optimal lighting, to add more is not going to enhance growth. To add more hours of light has been found to NOT help in fact deters the health of plants. Nutrient misting of roots? Why? When you want plants to go into budding one actually cuts the light/dark cycle down to 12/12. This signals to the plant the season is getting later in the year and to start producing seed. Now if you are in a greenhouse during the end of the season, you can slow the budding process by adding light to the beginning and end of the day. Depends on the plants and your goals.
    – stormy
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 20:39
  • I have to disagree with the first part as there are many well documented studies showing that increasing the DLI increases the biomass production at least during vegetative state. For everbearing strawberries an increase of DLI from 16 to 29 multiply the growth by 1.5. Regarding nutrient misting this is for a better and faster absorption of nutrients and o2. Thanks for the info about budding, so basically you reduce the DLI to send a signal to the plant that's time to flower :), right?
    – Vincent Teyssier
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 20:48
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    Ok good to know. I've continued my readings and the general advice is to use a 19-19-19 @3g per liter before flowering and then somlething lighter in Nitrogen once flowering starts. Nitrogen mainly helps developping leaves, which are the key element to high photosynthesis, so once the base is strong enough, as you said you don't want leaves to developp anymore but fruits, which would explain why you reduce Nitrogen when flowering stage starts.
    – Vincent Teyssier
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 9:32

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The interaction between photoperiods and temperature is not well characterised in USA strawberry cultivars. In Japan in unheated glasshouses they have experimentally prevented plants from entering dormancy with supplementary lighting in winter to extend their vegetative phase.

http://cals.arizona.edu/strawberry/Hydroponic_Strawberry_Information_Website/Supplemental_Lighting.html

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