Just purchased this Dwarf Jade bonsai and want to ensure my light setup is okay, don’t have to many sunny windows so I found one where it maybe gets 3 hours of natural sunlight, so I have this grow light setup to help pick up the slack. It was top rated on Amazon and I have it run for most of the day once I see it’s not getting direct sunlight anymore. Any other pre-cautions I should take? 

P.S. I would put it outside but there are a lot of insects that have been wrecking havoc on my other outdoor plants this season

Jades do not need much light. I grow them up here in sweden without artificiell light. In our winters we are happy if we get 5 hours of direct unfiltered sun per month.

With that beeing said. You do not give any information whatsoever about your light that can help answering your question. 

Here’s all the information about the light I have. 

This document did not give away much usable information. But I crossed checked the specs wit the lught I use for propagating jade cuttings and which I am looking into upgrading sinze I think it is too weak. It is by no mean a perfect comparison sinze I do not have access to par readings or spectral graphs.

My light 45 w. This one is 25w. So that suggests half the amount of light.

My light 5850 lumens, this light is 2000 lumens which suggests a third amount of light.

Calculate for energy efficiency using lumens as base: My light 130 lumens per watt. This light 80 lumens per watt which suggests really bad energy efficiency.

the upgrades I am looking at is around 7-8000 lumens. To get there with this light would require around 4 units.

Now, lumens is the measurement of light streangth using the human eye not clorphyll. The action curve for clorophyll is totally different to the one for the human eye. So do not use that number to calculate non grow lights. However, when comparing two different grow lights you have something like 20-30% accuracy.

With the information given and my own experience with grow lights my conclusion is that it is way to weak to support growth.


 

Thank you for the reply I greatly appreciate it! I will be looking into getting a stronger light soon to replace this one closer to the specs you mentioned, for now I will make sure it gets more natural sunlight and only use this as a backup plan. Thank you again!

Just found a 48 watt grow light with great reviews I am going to give a try, no specifics on how many lumens it gives off but I’d imagine it would be quite a bit closer to your specifications, also is app controlled which is great since I travel for work a lot!

Does the unit you are looking at specify PAR? Lumens as stated does not tell the truth about how efficient it is for plants.
 

Description doesn’t have PAR ratings, read through reviews on the light and found a couple of people using them for jade plants and quoting good results, hoping when using it as a supplemental boost for my tree (it does get some natural light from the window it’s left at) it will be enough. Going to let my tree settle in since it seems slightly stressed from the move but overall seems healthy and see how it goes with these lights. Really appreciate all the help!