How much Lighting in watts per square foot is required for a Garden?

Question

Hi I would like to know how much wattage is needed to grow an inside garden that is lets say 400 square feet in specific. The garden will have a variety of vegetables and fruits, nothing in particular just a little bit of everything. This is assuming no sunlight, just wattage from light bulbs. How many watts are needed per square foot garden.

Thanks so much for the answer this has been bothering me for the longest time now and i cant find it on the web.

Answer 1

You need to search for the number of candle-power needed. 1 candle power is the amount of light put out by one candle one foot away from an object. The noonday sun puts out something like 1000 candle power. if you have an eight foot ceiling you will need less lumens (total light output) to achieve the same candle power (total light output / the square of the distance) than if you have a 12 foot ceiling. So assuming a ten foot ceiling, a one square foot room and a lighting requirement of 100 candlepower you would need a bulb that put out 10,000 lumens. this could be achieved with an incandecent bulb of massive wattage requirements, or a flourescent tube of smaller wattage requirements. I was just making up numbers so I don't know that this will work for you, but it should set you on the right track.

Answer 2

According to some literature I was reading, electric baseboard is 10-15 watts per sq ft. The current "battle" out there is between electric baseboard, hydronic hot water baseboards and radiant heat (under the flooring material). They are all pretty close.

Answer 3

50 watts of fluorescent per plant when they're in vegetation stage is plenty.