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I am looking into the development of a hydroponics system with artificial lighting and temperature. Is there a chart showing daylight time and type(Cloud, Direct, etc.) and temperatures between plants for ideal production?

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  • You can learn a lot from here! Commented Oct 26, 2015 at 16:56
  • Hi Alexander! I can't seem to load that link on my computer. It looks like a portion of a book in many languages, which is great, but I can't read beyond the cover page, and even that is blurry. Would you be willing to take some specific information from it and write an answer? Thanks! Commented Oct 31, 2015 at 16:16
  • What do you mean by daylight time? Commented Jun 22, 2022 at 9:34

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It depends on which plants and which part of their cycle you are trying to emulate.

Tomatoes as a tropical perennial will always benefit from 12 or more hours of direct sunlight every day.

However many herbs needs dormancy, such as parsley in order to go to seed in their second year.

You may not want seed however and will remove the parsley after its first year and replace with fresh.

It really all depends on what environment you are trying to emulate.

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Tomatoes and peppers need around 23-30 DLI (daily light interval) worth of light depending on how old they are (older = towards higher end). You should invest in a PAR meter (I find this one here is a good blend of affordable and accurate) and get ppfd readings from your grow light setup by placing the sensor at about where the top leaves are. Plug that and the daylight hours of exposure you plan to give it into a calculator like this one to get your DLI.

I've found that you want to have as gentle as possible light while still allowing for 6-8 hours of night time (they actually grow the most when they are in the "night" phase). Generally around 350-450 ppfd is a good range without over transpiring your plants or burning them.

Herbs are a different beast in that they need likely less light, grow faster, and have lesser nutrient requirements. I would grow herbs in a separate hydroponics loop than your flowering plants (tomatoes and peppers) for those reasons.

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