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Overwintering borderline hardy perennials - Dierama, Arthropodium etc.
arisaema:
I'm unfortunately still lacking a greenhouse, and have a bunch of seed pots that likely need to stay inside a cold basement over winter... These evergreen/semi-evergreen genera are a bit of a challenge - do they need light through winter, or will they survive kept dark and barely moist?
Vinny 123:
Coolest, south-facing windowsill, kept all but dry?
Spare bedroom which only has the barest minimum heating?
No light is likely to create a lot of hassle. Providing enough artificial light would be a hasle and not cheap.
Véronique Macrelle:
and install a frame until we have a greenhouse? a few breeze blocks and one or 2 layers of plastic?
Dierama is hardy enough for here in zone 7 in the open ground. arthropodium, I couldn't keep it indoors because it was too hot, and it froze in the greenhouse.
Deciduous plants go in the garage (frost-free).
I try to keep evergreen plants in an unheated attic, just below the velux window.
arisaema:
Thank you both, I feared they would demand light... Will likely have some LEDs running in the basement, so the Arthropodium candidum 'Rubrum' can go there. The Dierama... Unheated wintergarden will have to do, the main issue there is that it tends to get hot in daytime, and I was hoping to avoid splitting them until spring. They're considered too tender for Denmark, but I refuse to believe it until I've tried!
Vinny 123:
To provide sufficient light with no daylight, would cost a lot of money.
The human eye - most eyes out there - are amazing biological engineering. Most people can read, though not comfortably, with 10 lux illumination, in the UK, midday sunlight on an overcast day will provide around 5-10,000 lux or a lot less if really cloudy, a clear midday sky in summer will provide over 100,000 lux.
Does your eye allow you to appreciate the >x10,00 difference? Or the >>10x difference overcast to bright sunlight?
Horticultural LED lighting , purposely designed with highy directional beams, to produce growth, rather than just survival, runs at 5-600W per square metre. (As efficient as they are, that energy ends up as heat, very little is absorbed by the plants. That is basic physics, not really biology/botany.)
Even sgnificantly supplementing poor/dim natural light is costly, in both senses - to buy and run.
That said, what are you looking to over-winter? 2 pots? 20 pots? A single golfball low watt LED in a good reflector, can provide 1500-2000 lux 20-30cm below, but you'd need one for each pot unless the pots were very small.
Curious?
Available online for download - Southern African Bulb Group, Newsletter 50.
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