June 18, 2022
Grow lights can be important supplements to the health of your houseplants and are integral to growing food and other plants from seed to maturity indoors. The distance of the light from your plants makes a difference in how effective, ineffective, or harmful it may be to your plant.
When light sources are further away, they’re less intense than when they’re close up, meaning less light energy is being issued directly to the plants.
It also means that lamps, when they get close, are much more intense, and too much light at once can damage the plants’ leaves and stems.
Lots of variables go into what the right distance is for your situation, and keeping an eye on the plant to monitor its condition and responsiveness to the light is the best way to inform which, if any, adjustments need to be made.
Your indoor garden should mimic a natural growing environment as close as possible for the best results- complete with the ‘sun’. Therefore, the grow lights act as the sun from which your plants get the energy to grow.
The best part is that you have full control over the type of light to use and how much light will reach your herbs. Grow lights are suitable for seed starting because they help guarantee stocky, green seedlings. A wintertime bumper harvest of salad greens and herbs can also grow nicely under lights.
ECO Farm ECOD Samsung UV+ IR 1000W Dimmable LED Grow Light
Features:
The ECO Farm LED Grow Light is powered by Samsung Full Spectrum LEDs that drive a wide spectrum from 395nm to 730nm and produce 144597 Lumens. The full spectrum coverage gives better results. Available in 3000K and 6500K. Full-spectrum light with higher intensity in the 395–730nm spectrum has been shown to perform better than the targeted spectrum for general use. The ECO Farm Samsung LED grow light produces a 1000W PPF output of 2524.5μmol/s and a PAR efficacy of 2.8umol/J making this fixture incredibly efficient compared to other commercial fixtures. LEDs generate far less heat than HPS and other HID lamps making them perfect for horticulture. Lights can be installed much closer to the plants themselves getting them all the light they need and increase your harvest. Less heat also means a lot less power used for cooling your grow area. Stack that with power saving on the light itself for a huge drop in your power expenses.
Grower’s Choice ROI-E900 LED Grow Light
Features:
This Grower’s Choice LED grow light boosts up to 1,000 watts of supercharged photon output. Using Growers Choice’s proven PAR formula, the ROI-E900 utilizes our unique PAR formula and 3k full-phase spectral radiance into a 4'x5' growing space, producing tremendous light output and canopy coverage. Designed to accommodate commercial growers with wider tables or trays, the ROI-E900 offers the greatest potential for extended coverage, penetration and premium yields. The ROI-E900 will give you more power and more flowers!
Whether you’re new to growing indoors altogether or just new to growing plants with LED plant lights, you may not be familiar with some of the unique characteristics of LED lighting. Here are the main factors you want to check on when purchasing LED horticultural lights for your growth.
The factors are listed in no particular order. Only you can know which one is most important to you, given your specific growing situation.
Real Wattage And Theoretical Wattage
You may have noticed that most LED lights have two different wattage figures. One of these is the potential wattage and the other the actual wattage. The potential wattage is the wattage the light could run at if the LED chips were running at full power. For example, a light with two hundred 3w LEDs has a potential wattage of 600.
LED chips are never run at full power, though. Doing so would considerably shorten their life span. Generally, they are run at 50 to 60% of their potential power. This is their real wattage and is the amount of electricity the light will actually consume.
Light Spectrum
Most indoor horticultural LED lights use LEDs in multiple colors. The majority will be various shades of red and blue, with the better lights also using some white LEDs as well as some infrared and ultra-violet ones.
This mix of colors gives you all the light plants, need for every stage of growth: cloning, veg and bloom. It is referred to as full-spectrum light and is generally what you want.
There are a few exceptions. If you are looking for a light to only grow clones or to just veg plants, then you might want to check out one with mostly blue LEDs. If you are looking for a light to supplement your existing setup to give your plants a boost during the flowering stage, you’ll want one with mostly red LEDs.
Finally, I need to mention all-white LED fixtures. These lights use only white LED, which gives them a spectrum similar to natural sunlight (which is also a mix of the HPS and metal halide spectra). Proponents of white light claim it is best for plants because it gives them the light they are used to from the sun.
More and more, the indoor industry as a whole is moving toward the white light. White LED grow light fixtures are becoming much more common on the market as a result.
And white light does work well to grow and flower plants. But it includes a lot of light in the yellow and green ranges, which is light plants do not use much during photosynthesis. Thus, it goes to waste, right?
That has been the case made by manufacturers (and fans) of fixtures with mostly red and blue LED lights. They say these are more efficient, because you are not using any of the electricity you paid for to produce light that plants don’t want.
But plants do want that light. Sure, they don’t want as much of it as they do of light in the red and blue wavelengths, but they do still want it. That is why the best-selling LED grow lights these days all include white LEDs on their lights. And many use mostly white LED light.
Light Intensity
For LED lights, the most widely used measure of intensity is PAR (technically, it is PPFD and not PAR, but most still refer to it as PAR). It stands for Photosynthetically Active Radiation and is used to measure the amount of light in the wavelengths that plants use for photosynthesis. Some brands will list the lumen output, but that isn’t all that useful for grow lights.
Some brands give PAR readings for their indoor plant lights; others do not. Those that do often only give one value, which doesn’t really tell you much about its effectiveness for vegetative growing, much less blooming.
That value was taken dead centre beneath the light. A large value here means you have a powerful light in the middle of the coverage area, but it tells you nothing about the strength of the light around the edges.
Ideally, manufacturers will provide a PAR footprint that shows PAR readings throughout the coverage area. Most do not do this, however, so you will often have to look to tests done by third parties, such as review sites, for this information. For white LED lights, lumen output can have some value. For others, it is mostly useless.
Having an LED grow light gives you the ability to bring your favourite herbs, flowers, and plants indoors. It’s convenient, and you have complete flexibility over what you can grow. With so many different lights at various price points, your decision really comes down to personal preference, what you want to grow, and where you want to grow it. Once you know the type of grow light that is best for your plants and your space, you can get started with growing indoors.
October 20, 2023