I grow the main part of my winter growing bulbs on a large table on the attic of my house. This table on its turn is situated near the windows of the dormer. Due to this situation the plants don't get enough sunlight to grow and to flower during their growing period; November-April. Therefore I bought last year a so called SON-T lamp and hanged it above the plants. This lamp has a power of 400 Watt.

The space between the lamp and the plants is about 1 metre. The lamp lights an acrea of about 1.4 square metres (0.7 x 2 metres). The daily period of lighting is 6.5 hours, during the morning and the early afternoon. The lamp produces not only light, but a lot of heat as well. In order to keep the temperature in the room below 17 ºC I keep one window always opened. During the winter we had in 1999/2000 this was hardly to realize.

With the lamp I took a great risk. I had no experience with it and in various books and on the world wide web I couldn't find any information. Well there was information on growing one specific plant with such a lamp: Cannabis. Now one year later I can say that most plants react positive and grow well and flower. I have positive experencies with Cyrtanthus, Veltheimia, Lachenalia mathewsii, Haemanthus, Albuca and Gethyllis. Caliphruria, other Lachenalia species, Gladiolus and Ornithogalum grow less prosperous.

I hope to evaluate my experiences in one or two years, so I can to judge the general possibilities of the lamp to grow winter-growers.