Last year I started cuttings over the winter and they seemed to do fine. I had them on a table in an east facing window. I did have old single pane windows half the time last year. I don't know if they made a difference, now we have new efficient windows. Would adding a grow light like this one help at all keep everything happy while they are inside? If so would you use it during the day when the light is shining in the room?

http://www.amazon.com/Hydrofarm-2-Foot-Start-Light-System/dp/B0006856EQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1322103585&sr=8-4

Any plant & aquarium bulb will suffice.

Thanks Jason, To bad I gave away an extra aquarium not that long ago... My other Metal Halide aquaruim light is in use, but that this is blinding when not over the tank. So, if I pick up one of these or some other t5 light I would just have it on during the day along with the day light?

Metal halide might be too bright. Maybe a Fluro 100 watt

6500k is what I use. I bought a 4 foot 4 bulb and a 4 foot 8 bulb for my basement. They work very well. Right now I am having very good results. 

I don't think my fish would be happy if I took there light, lol. I don't have a big space just a 3x3 table. One light like the one from amazon and sun light should be good?

Yep

I use 40w fluorescent plant and aquarium bulbs. 18 hours on and 6 off kept about 10" above the top of the plant.

This one worked very well for me fixed under my lionel train layout table and i have shown pictures of it in the past.
http://www.specialty-lights.com/960320.html

I use shop lights with 40 watt bulbs - either plant light bulbs or one cool white with one warm white bulbs. It is cheap and works fine. I use a timer set for 10 hours.

Please see this thread from last year on the same subject for my growing setup and other suggestions: http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/Dormancy-Broken-Looking-for-Growlights-5075757

Thanks Jason, I guess I missed that one in search. "grow light" gets a lot of hits

Yeah, the only reason I found it is because I knew I'd posted pictures of my setup somewhere, so I searched for the word "lights" in posts started by my username.  It returned four threads, which really limited the field from the 73 you get just searching for "lights" alone. 

In my first post on that thread (the one with no pictures) I supply part numbers and whatnot, Home Depot still carries the Lithonia fixtures here, not sure about your location.  The two-bulb fixtures are only $10.  What will kick your ass is the price of the bulbs.  They last a long time though.

I have 14 trees under that setup right now and they're growing great.  I'm going to give a shot at growing them under lights until spring, then putting them out, since I haven't done this yet.  I'm curious to see if they'll stunt at all. 

My guess ( I'm doing this as well), is that they may stunt at first. They then will get acclimated after about a month to the normal light cycle.

I'm concerned that leaf scorch will be a problem.  The amount of UV from these lights is like a miniscule fraction of what the sun would put out.

Do they commonly drop their leaves when exposed to real sunlight?

Jose,

I'm worried about leaf scorch.  I'm pretty sure you already know what leaf scorch is, but just in case .... this is what happens when unfiltered UV-heavy sunlight hits a leaf that hasn't been subjected to direct sunlight outdoors:  http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post/This-is-what-quotleaf-scorchquot-looks-like-5304488

You normally don't deal with this if your trees wake up from dormancy out in full sunlight.  I'm afraid I may have scorch problems with sun scorch from trees that have been under fluorescent lights and pushed out into full sun.

2700k for fruiting or when your ready for that stage
6500k for vegetative growth

I think I would still acclimated them outside the same way. I am just concerned with some startered plants this year. I started some earlier than last year and although I really did not appear to have an issue and the cuttings I didn't kill on my own seemed to all be growing well. I would like to add a little safety net to keep them alive until spring.

americanfigboy:

I don't understand the numbers. Is there a site that explains this?

luke

The #'s refer to color temperature. 6500 closely resembles natural sunlight.

Last year I received all my SWC from growing under lights.

If one is curious about the T-5 light spectrum , hours to use in vegatative growth etc here is a faq'shttp://www.specialty-lights.com/plant-grow-faq3.html#whatis

There are other navagation faq's on the website explaining different aspects of lighting and a very good read imho.

One can spend a lot of money in the process or a little <<me>> just to sustain the plants for the winter.
Its all whats in your budget.

This is reason why i bought 1 light only and a reflector .
If i recall correctly i ran my light for 14 hours daily on a timer under the train table with spectrum of 65000k and 56 watts of usage.

I needed a fix for the winter. So I started with the growlights and keeping something going during the winter.