Philippine Science High School

Main Campus

An Experiment of the Effectiveness of

Growing Plants Indoors Using Artificial
Lighting

Allan Joseph P. Aban

June 2021

1
An Experiment of the Effectiveness of Growing Plants Indoors
Using Artificial Lighting

by

Allan Joseph P. Aban

Submitted to the Faculty of the

Philippine Science High School – Main Campus
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
Research 1

June 2021

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to all who are reading this document. This was made over the course of a

year, so it would be appreciated if this document was fully read until the end. This document

took many hours to complete, and was made by myself with limited help. I would like to first

thank my research teacher for giving constructive feedback on the components of this

document and for the idea of doing this document in the first place. I would also like to thank

my parents for taking care of me and supporting me while doing this document, and for that I

am truly grateful. Lastly, I would like to thank God for being a support during these times,

and as someone who I can always talk to. So please read this document until the end, I would

appreciate it very much.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Acknowledgements ...............................................................................................3
Table of Contents ..................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................6

Background of the Study ............................................................................6

Objectives of the Study ..............................................................................6

Significance of the Study............................................................................7

Scope and Limitations ................................................................................7
LITERATURE REVIEW .....................................................................................8

Indoor Gardening........................................................................................8
Current opinions and reviews on Indoor Gardening ........................8

Techniques in making an Indoor Garden .........................................9

Current Events in Indoor Gardening ..........................................................9

Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Indoor Gardening ...................10

Types of Lighting used in Indoor Gardening ...........................................11

Light Requirements of Plants .........................................................11

Pechay ......................................................................................................12

Plant Measurement Techniques .....................................................12

Methodology .......................................................................................................13

Process Flowchart .....................................................................................13

Summary ...................................................................................................13
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 Preparation of Indoor Gardening Set-up ..................................................14
Planting of Pechay seeds ..........................................................................15

Observation of Plant Growth ....................................................................16

Bibliography .......................................................................................................18

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 INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

According to Indoor Gardening (2020), indoor gardening is the act/practice of

growing plants in a closed space (indoors). It is usually done when there is a lack of space to

practice regular gardening, and as said by Pierce and Baessler (2018), indoor gardening can

be done in apartments or at homes with little space for gardening.

According to Zach (2011), when one practices indoor gardening, he/she must take

into account the items needed to build an indoor garden, which includes pots, soil, and light

(which can be classified as either sunlight or artificial light). Since indoor gardening is done

in indoors, people have limited access to natural light due to living conditions and limited

space. Due to this, sunlight cannot be used indoors, and so artificial lighting is usually used

as a substitute. Some people want to find out whether artificial lighting is a suitable substitute

to sunlight. According to Pearson (2020), artificial lighting can also be used at night. It also

allows for easier indoor gardening since you can control the lighting indoors.

Objectives of the Study

The project aims to show that a Pechay under artificial light can grow at the same rate

and the same height in a month as a Pechay under sunlight. This will show that artificial light

is a suitable substitute to natural light in growing plants indoors. Also, it will be shown that

there is a type of artificial light that is most effective in growing Pechay plants compared to

other types of light. Specifically, LED, incandescent, and fluorescent bulbs will be used in

growing a Pechay plant.

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 By the end of this project, the growth measurements of a Pechay plant will be

obtained. Specifically, the project aims to obtain the plant height, plant weight, and the leaf

area, to compare growing plants under artificial light as compared to growing plants under

sunlight. This is to test artificial light as a substitute to sunlight in growing plants indoors.

The growth measurements of a Pechay plant under artificial light will have the same growth

measurements as a Pechay plant under sunlight.

Significance of the Study

This project will show that artificial lighting is just as effective as using sunlight in

indoor gardening for growing Pechay. Indoor gardeners can use artificial lighting instead of

sunlight as a substitute. Artificial lighting makes it easier for a person to choose a location to

build an indoor garden, because a he/she does not need to find a place with sunlight to grow

plants in (ex. Next to a window). This study will show that if sunlight cannot be used in

indoor gardening, artificial lighting can be used and is just as effective in growing Pechay.

Scope and Limitations

The experimental units that will be used will be Pechay. The experiment will take a

month to complete due to the time it takes for the plant to fully mature. The plants will be

grown for a month under different lighting conditions, and then their growth measurements

will be obtained and calculated. The experiment will be done indoors, to simulate the

environment for indoor gardening. The materials and equipment needed will be bought when

necessary. Some measurements (ex. Dry mass weight) cannot be obtained due to lack of

materials (ex. Weighing scale).

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 LITERATURE REVIEW

Indoor Gardening

Indoor Gardening is the art of gardening in one’s own house. It is usually done by

those who do not have enough space for regular gardening. Plants used in indoor gardening

also need many of the same things that are used in regular gardening, like proper lighting,

temperature and humidity. Though as mentioned by (Solis-Toapanta et al., 2020), proper

nutrient solutions are also needed. Today, there seems to be even more people practicing

Indoor Gardening due to the pandemic. In a study by (Montefrio, 2020), there seems to be an

increasing number of people practicing Indoor gardening for food concerns. There are many

scientific literatures relating to Indoor gardening, though people may not read them due to

having to pay for scientific journals (Solis-Toapanta et al., 2020).

Current opinions and reviews on Indoor Gardening

People practice Indoor Gardening for many reasons. They use it to grow food, or just

as a hobby. (Solis-Toapanta et al., 2020) conducted a study using data mining that checks

responses to posts and their accuracy to real information. It was found out that the responses

to posts were mostly inaccurate, showing the disinformation from these responses.

New Gardeners might not be able to discern verified information from

misinformation, so they may do something that could damage their garden. There is literature

by scientists relating to indoor gardening, but they may not be able to interpret the

information. Professionals need to explain terms in open-access sources for gardeners to be

able to plant indoors. (Solis-Toapanta et al., 2020)

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Techniques in making an Indoor Garden

As said by (Reynold et al., 2019), there are different types of indoor gardens or indoor

gardening techniques, which include Compartment planting (using compartments to store

soil and Aquaculture planting (no dirt is used in gardening).

In a study by (Solis-Toapanta et al., 2020), he checked various posts and responses to

them on Reddit relating to indoor gardening. They were looking to build their own indoor

gardening systems, and were asking how to make their own DIY (do-it-yourself) systems.

This shows the increasing interest in indoor gardening. (Reynold et al., 2019) showed

existing solutions to make Indoor Gardening easier, which included the hydroponic method

of gardening, a vertical farming system, and “Click and grow”, which uses LED lights and

plant pods. There are problems to these solutions though, which includes a blackening of

leaves when improperly using “Click and grow” due to intense heat, and a vertical farming

system needs electricity, so if the power is out, the system would not work. There are

solutions to these problems though, like an ability to adjust the height of “Click and Grow”.

These solutions and methods can help make indoor gardening easier to people who practice

it. (Reynold et al., 2019)

Current Events in Indoor Gardening

Cities tend to struggle with Indoor Gardening activities due to limited space. With

some small countries like South Korea wanting to expand their use of Indoor Gardening, new

patents and technologies are needed to make more efficient Indoor gardens, especially in

cities. As said by (Hong and Lee, 2019), there have been many patents and inventions that

aim to address this problem.

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Most of these patents seem to come from South Korea, the United States, or Japan. (Hong

and Lee, 2019) shows that these patents either provide technologies on indoor greening, or on

the areas where there may be indoor gardens (rest areas). These 2 categories are further

divided into sub-groups. Patents on Indoor greening technologies include different structures

like Vertical Gardening systems, water irrigation systems, and “Indoor Vegetation

Environmental Control” systems. Patents on rest areas include the structures of rest areas,

and Indoor Environmental Control. From what was observed by (Hong and Lee, 2019), most

of these patents relate to indoor greening technologies, mostly being irrigation systems or

vegetative control, though it was observed that there were on patents on green wall

technology or on irrigation related to environmental control.

Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Indoor Gardening

Due to the pandemic, many people nowadays are worried for their food security due

to lockdowns and a lack of income. Due to this, they have been looking on Indoor Gardening

as a solution to alleviate their problem. They also practice it to do something productive

during their spare time. As said by (Montefrio, 2020), Indoor gardening has been encouraged

by local governments by giving out seeds for free. According to (Montefrio, 2020) there were

an increasing number of people partaking in Indoor Gardening. They usually consulted by

looking at Facebook groups related to that topic. He says that while Indoor Gardening is

good, it is not a solution to food security, which is said to be cause by food mismanagement

in the Philippines.

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Types of Lighting used in Indoor Gardening

The lights that are used for Indoor Gardening are usually artificial due to the lack of

sunlight reaching indoors. These artificial lights can either be LEDs or fluorescent lights. In a

study by (Paz et al., 2019), the effectiveness of artificial light in growing plants indoors was

tested. Both fluorescent lights and LEDs were used in the study. It was observed that the light

sources used were of lower grade and output than commercially used light sources for

gardening due to limited space in small areas for indoor gardening and lack of access to

quality light sources for regular consumers.

Light Requirements of Plants

Homes are usually not as effective in growing indoor gardens as commercial

companies due to lacking the adequate material for effective indoor gardening and difficulty

in doing so. Daily light integrals (DLI) were used by (Paz et al., 2019) in checking the

amount of light a plant receives. It was said that the DLI needed was around 20 - 30 m-2 d -

1, but the authors want to find the adequate DLI for homes due to homes emitting less DLI

overall. From the study, it was observed that the lamp used did not matter for growing plants,

though shoot fresh and dry mass were observed to be in larger amounts for plants under LED

lamps. (Paz et al., 2019) said that this may be due to LED lamps emitting more green light

which has been shown to penetrate deeper into leaves due to the chlorophyll.

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Pechay

In an experiment conducted by (Gonzales et al., 2015), Pechay were used to test

different kinds of compost fertilizers. As said in his research, Pechay is a plant from the

Philippines that people use its leaves and petioles for cuisine and for consumption. The

Pechay were grown for 21 days until being harvested after transplanting. From the

experiment conducted, it was observed that adding compost in growing Pechay increases

yield of the plant and its growth.

Plant Measurement Techniques

From an experiment by (Paz et al., 2019), lettuce were grown under different artificial

lights in different amounts of time. To measure how effective a light was, the growth of

lettuce was measured. Parameters which include shoot fresh and dry mass were used to

measure to growth of the plant. The quality of a plant (specifically the pigment content and

the leaf concentrations of anthocyanin and carotenoid) was also measured. From the results

of the experiment, green light from LEDs contributed to the largest amount of shoot fresh

and dry mass growth. The results also showed that increasing DLI increased shoot fresh, dry

mass, and the quality of the lettuce, though growth did slow down slightly as DLI grew

faster. Leaf area and thickness were not measured, though it was observed that plants under

low DLI light had larger and thinner leaves.

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 METHODOLOGY

Process Flowchart

Preparation of Indoor Gardening Set-up

Random assignment of each Pechay seed to a lamp

Planting of Pecahy seeds under each lamp

Observation of Plant Growth

Summary

First, the materials will be procured, especially the lamps and the Pechay seeds. The

lamps (fluorescent, LEDs, and incandescent) will have Pechay grown under them. They will

be compared with growing plants under artificial light to see which light is the most effective

in growing plants. Groups of Pechay seeds (three per group) will be randomly assigned to

each light, with each pot receiving three seeds each, and also each pot will be assigned

randomly to a certain light. The Pechay will be grown for a month, with growth

measurements being taken each week. Both qualitative (Appearance of plant) and

quantitative (plant weight, plant height) parameters will be obtained each week. At the end of

the experiment, results will be compared to determine which light is the most effective in

growing plants.

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Preparation of Indoor Gardening Set-up

The materials needed for the project are:

 One packet of Pechay seeds

 Four plant pots
 One Watering can
 One Fluorescent lamp
 One Incandescent lamp
 One LED lamp
 One Weighing scale
 One Ruler
 Packs of Soil
 Camera

The aim of this experiment will to show that artificial lights are just as effective as

using sunlight when growing Pechay in an indoor garden. The plant that will be used in the

experiment will be Pechay, due to its fast growth into maturity. In an experiment by

(Gonzales et al., 2015), Pechay took 21 days to grow, until being harvested.

As the experimental units, a packet of Pechay seeds will first be obtained and

procured to be used for the indoor garden. Plant pots and soil were also obtained to be used

with the Pechay seeds. The treatments that will be used in the experiment will be the three

different artificial lights (fluorescent, incandescent, and LED lamps), that would also be

bought and obtained to be used in the experiment. These treatments will be used on the

experimental units to test their effectiveness on plants. Sunlight will also be a treatment since

it will be applied as a neutral control set-up for comparison with artificial lighting. (Paz et al.,

2019) also conducted a study with these treatments.

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 The experiment will be done indoors away from a window, so that the artificial

lighting is not affected or supplemented in any way by sunlight. The lamps will also use the

same amount of watts and voltage so that they have similar intensity in growing plants. An

experiment by (Paz et al., 2019) used Daily light integrals (DLI) in checking the amount of

light a plant receives.

While there are different types of indoor gardens or indoor gardening techniques,

which include Compartment planting (using compartments to store soil and Aquaculture

planting (no dirt is used in gardening) as said by (Reynold et al., 2019), these techniques will

not be used in the actual experiment to make sure that extraneous variables are eliminated,

and to only focus on the artificial lighting in growing plants.

Planting of Pechay seeds

To prevent extraneous variables from affecting the experiment, and to ensure that

only the lights will affect plant growth, the control variables that will appear in the

experiment would be: the plant used, the amount of water that a plant would receive, the

intensity of the light, the pots for holding soil, the soil itself, and the duration of time that a

plant will be exposed to light. As the treatment, the type of lights used to grow the Pechay

will be the independent variable. The types of lights that will be used will be: sunlight, LEDs,

incandescent light, and fluorescent light. A study by (Paz et al., 2019) tested some artificial

lights (fluorescent and LEDs) for growing plants.

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 The experiment will compare the growth of Pechay under artificial light as compared

to sunlight, so the dependent variable will be the final growth of the plant at the end of the

experiment. The parameters that will be taken will be the plant height, plant weight, and leaf

area. The sunlight is the control treatment, since we are comparing to artificial lights to it.

Each artificial light (LED, fluorescent, and incandescent) will be randomly assigned to a

group of three Pechay, with another three Pechay assigned to sunlight, so there are twelve

Pechay in total. Each artificial light corresponds to a single pot, so there are four pots in total,

with each pot having three seeds. The Pechay seeds will be planted in the pots, and will be

watered every day. They will be under each light for around 8 hours, so that the amount of

light each plant receives will be the same. The type of experimental design that will be used

will be Complete Randomized Design (CRD) because all the subjects are homogenous.

Observation of Plant Growth

The growth of the plants will be observed for a month, with data from the plant being

collected each day. The data that will be collected will be both qualitative and quantitative.

The quantitative data that will be collected are the plant height, plant weight, and leaf area.

Plant weight will be calculated at the end of the experiment. To calculate plant weight, a

plant in one of the groups (one group per light) will be removed from the soil. The soil will

be removed. After this, the plant will be measured on a weighing scale. To measure leaf area,

as said by (Trimble, 2019), you need to take a leaf from the plant, put it in graphing paper,

and count the number of grids that overlap the leaf. The number you will obtain is the leaf

area. To measure the plant height, a ruler will be used. From the top of the surface of the soil,

the plant will be measured in centimeters, up to the top of the plant.

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The qualitative data that will be measured will be the amount of leaves grown by the plant,

and the color of the leaf how the leaf looks like. The amount of leaves will be counted at the

end of the experiment, while the appearance of the leaf will be checked every week.

(Paz et al., 2019) conducted an experiment that measured the growth of lettuce using

different parameters. These parameters were both qualitative and quantitative. These

parameters included shoot fresh dry mass, and the quality (appearance) was used to measure

to growth of the plant.

A comparison between the growth of a plant under sunlight (the control treatment), to the

growth of a plant under artificial light (the experimental treatments) will be made. Since we

are trying to find the effectiveness of each artificial light compared to sunlight, the light with

the highest value of plant growth (based on plant height, plant appearance, plant weight, etc.)

will be considered the most effective light. The different artificial lights (fluorescent, LEDs,

incandescent) with also be compared each other to see which one of those lights is the most

effective in growing plants.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Indoor Gardening. (2020, December 23). What is Indoor Gardening?

https://indoorgardening.com/what-is-indoor-gardening/

Pierce, S., & Baessler, L. (2018, October 23). Indoor Gardening Pros And Cons. Retrieved

February 12, 2021, from https://blog.gardeningknowhow.com/gardening-pros-

cons/indoor-gardening-pros-and-cons/

Zach. (2011, August 09). What is Indoor Gardening? - Dengarden - home and garden.

Retrieved February 12, 2021, from https://dengarden.com/gardening/What-Is-Indoor-

Gardening#:~:text=Indoor%20gardening%20can%20best%20be,no%20land%20to%

20garden%20on.

Walls-Thumma, D. (2020, September 03). Incandescent light vs. sunlight for plant growth.

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incandescent-light-vs-sunlight-plant-growth.html

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from https://www.gardenguides.com/129561-artificial-light-indoor-plants.html

Hong. K., & Lee, H. (2019). Analysis on Indoor Garden Technology Trends Based on Patent

Search. International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology, 7(4), 40-48,

https://doi.org/10.17703/IJACT.2019.7.4.40

Montefrio, M. J. (2020). Interrogating the “productive” HOME gardener in a time of

pandemic Lockdown in the Philippines. Food and Foodways, 28(3), 216-225.

doi:10.1080/07409710.2020.1790142
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Reynold, P., Pratheep, C., Williams, M., & Ariffuddeen, M. (2020, August 8). Case

Study on Performing Indoor Gardening with New Technology Implication to

Overcome the Gaps in the Existing Solutions. Retrieved February 15, 2021, from

https://rspsciencehub.com/pdf_85_fa346c2d941ee49598994237496bd3c0.html

Solis-Toapanta, E., Kirilenko, A., & Gómez, C. (2020). Indoor gardening with

hydroponics: A reddit community analysis to identify knowledge gaps.

HortTechnology, 30(3), 346-355. doi:10.21273/horttech04574-20.

Paz, M., Fisher, P. R., Gómez, C. (2019). Minimum Light Requirements for Indoor

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Research Publications, 5(2), http://www.ijsrp.org/research-paper-0215/ijsrp-

p3818.pdf

Trimble, S. (2019, April 16). Leaf Area - How & Why Measuring Leaf Area is Vital to Plant

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why-measuring-leaf-area-is-vital-to-plant-research/

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