Originally Posted by jfaunda

Hey everyone. I am new to growing banana plants and just wanted to run some ideas by everyone. I've been doing research for the past week and the hardest part to figure out has been the lighting set up for my not doing so well 10" Dwarf Cavendish. I have looked through as many of the posts I can find on here relating to indoor lighting and have seen a decent number of Richard's comments. I've also read the cannabis forums as some users have suggested.

I've seen the following numbers as the main guideline to follow from Richard's comments and also their grow guide (all at 1 meter distance from plant):

1200 W per plant for 10 hours a day
This number was also broken down to 300 W/m^2 due to the spread of the plant in another comment (300 W/m^2 * 4 m^2).
30 W/ft^2 (323 W/m^2) for minimum over wintering
50 W/ft^2 (538 W/m^2) for minimum outdoor style growth
70 W/ft^2 (753 W/m^2) for optimal outdoor style growth / flowering.
(Also not sure if these numbers are for full grown or 1 size fits all)

When seeing these numbers at first, I thought equivalent watts was the units and I believe this is definitely not the case, that instead I should be using actual wattage of the lights. Because of that misunderstanding, I have been under-lighting my plant for about a week.

Currently I have a 35W 5000K LED @ 4000 lumens being used (I realize it should be closer to 6500K). Now following the inverse square law, theoretically I should be able to replicate the minimum outdoor growth to ease my plant back into the light using my current setup at 10 inches. At 6 hours a day of ~500 W/m^2 this should be the same amount of light as 300W for 10 hours. This is my goal as I want the plant to first bounce back and grow some before I invest big bucks in a good lighting system for the winter months.

Does this make sense to anyone else and actually check out? According to the law it would be the same as a 400W light at 34 inches away which seems intuitive to me. Obviously this is a rough calculation and doesn't involve spread, reflection, PAR, micro mols, etc. Please let me know either way, my feelings won't be hurt if I'm completely wrong and I am willing to learn.