Will a blacklight work to grow a plant without any outside light.?
The setup I use for growing orchids in my dim kitchen is 2- 4′ shoplights, with one “daylight” or “grow light” bulb and one cool white bulb in each fixture. That works fine for Phals, Paphs, some Phrags and some Cattleya-types. It’s too much light for African violets, unless they’re more than 2′ from the lights. A black light wouldn’t give you the full spectrum light that plants need to grow and bloom. Careful, though, because I know some people who were trying to grow some of the high-light orchids and carnivorous plants, using high-intensity metal halide lights- a couple of them had the police raid their house looking for pot, because their electricity bill jumped so dramatically when they set up their lights…
