January 14, 2022
The way you grow plants indoors differs from traditional outdoor gardening. It requires different techniques and tools. The most essential aspect here is to create a naturally humid environment with the right light, temperature, and water to mimic the plant’s natural habitat. The integral part of organizing successful indoor gardening is to create optimal lighting conditions. However, it will be rather challenging to achieve appropriate lighting without large windows and exposure to sunlight.
To overcome this issue, you should purchase the best light for your indoor plants. Unfortunately, artificial lights aren’t identical. They offer different features and have specific upsides or downsides. If you want to pick the right light type, you need to take into account all aspects of the growing process. Read the expert tips on how to choose the best grow light for your indoor garden to make an informed decision.
The first step in choosing the best LED grow lights for your needs is deciding what kind of plants you’re going to be growing.
Remember, the primary purpose of a grow light is to provide the illumination that your plants need to photosynthesise and create energy. If you already have a chosen plant, do some research.
Another thing to think about when looking into the best LED grow lights is what kind of surface area coverage you need. If you plan to grow things in your home, then you might require plenty of space. In picking the best grow light, the watt LED level and the surface area it can cover, are crucial.
Remember, when checking the surface area, you’ll need to ensure that a large number of lights won’t cause too much heat in your growing area. Protect yourself from any excess heat that might increase your chances of a fire hazard.
Gavita Pro 1700e Gen2 LED Grow Light
Features:
Operating at 645 watts, the Gavita LED grow light has an output of 1700 µmol s-1 PAR for an impressive efficacy of 2.6 µmol s-1 per watt. The Pro 1700e provides wide, intense light coverage through its 8 passively cooled LED strips, allowing you to use it in low rooms, vertical racks, benches and even tents. This powerful full-spectrum light source is suitable for full-cycle plant growth from the vegetative stage to the flowering and finishing stages that require higher light. Made with premium Philips drivers, Samsung white LEDs and Osram Crimson LEDs, this luminaire uses only the highest quality components. Using the Gavita E-Series LED Adapter and Gavita Master Controller, the fixture is dimmable to 50% without loss of efficiency.
Features:
The PhotonTek LED grow light is a perfect solution for home-grow, grow tents, grow rooms, and all kinds of indoor cultivations. Only the highest-grade materials and components are used in PHOTONTEK’s LED fixtures. Delivering safe, dependable light PHOTONTEK fixtures have industry-leading performance. By perfectly balancing a high quality, full spectrum light with highest intensity PPFD delivered through a multi-bar, Linear design. PHOTONTEK Creates the ultimate ceiling of light for the entire plant growth cycle, making these LEDs the smartest option for a higher and faster return on investment. Producing a total PPF output of 1620 µmol/s and a Photon Efficacy (fixture efficiency) of 2.7 µmol/J, PHOTONTEK X 600W Pro LED creates a homogeneous light spread at a close distance from the crop canopy, resulting in outstanding results when used in indoor multi-layer cultivation systems, grow rooms and tents.
There are a number of things we look out for when purchasing LED grow lights, some of them are pretty easy to overlook, especially for new growers. Let’s go over some of these that we watch out for, to help you understand the rankings here and what you should be aware of before purchasing.
Seedlings
It’s usually best to keep plants that are just emerging into their seedling stage away from the bright lights and nutrient-rich soils that they will vegetate in. LED grow lights that are meant to hang closely overhead while producing very gentle heat and light are ideal for these purposes. Adding one to a grow op will greatly increase the number of usable seedlings each time you start a new crop.
However, if you’re only growing one or two plants anyways it may not be a worthwhile space, time, and monetary investment to create the perfect environment for each individual seed. Weigh the price and effort investment against the size of the grow you’re looking to accomplish. It’s well worth it for large grows where each individual seed matter, but when you have a glut of them a simpler set up might be better.
Vegetative
These LED grow lights are also pretty great at both providing enough light, as long as they are full-spectrum, and bringing a decent amount of supplemental light for bigger systems to be able to create some fairly impressive results during the vegetative state of plants.
If using them alone, aim for something that hangs overhead well and don’t overload the room they’re growing in with multiple plants. Stick to one or two that you can take care of very well, and the light should be plenty.
Flowering
This is where these grow lights tend to, but not always, lack. Plants like a lot of red light when they begin blooming and LEDs tend to lack in both of these camps.
That being said, they will provide enough to allow for some amount of flowering. Just don’t get your hopes up for massive buds without an additional, powerful red-light source.
There are some LEDs, even on this list, of note that handle this aspect of plants just fine. So, if it’s a concern for you make sure to add this additional lighting to your list.
The good news is it won’t be an issue until the end of their cycle, so there is time to prepare.
Light Spectrums
Full-spectrum lighting works by combining a number of blue lights, white lights, and red lights together to create a combination of colors that somewhat mimics what plants need in nature.
However, a lot of LEDs tend to skew towards the blue spectrum due to that being better for most stages of plant growth. The problem is, plants love red light when it comes time to flower. Full-spectrum lighting does still work for things like flowering, but the best growth is achieved with more red light than most LEDs provide.
Make sure to find a way to bring in additional red lighting for blooming plants if getting the largest buds is a concern of yours.
If you’re planning on growing plants indoors and you want to ensure the highest quality yields possible, any of the full spectrum LED grow lamps above would most certainly do the trick. Powerful, efficient, reliable, and environmentally friendly, each lamp is well-designed and will be sure to help you grow robust crops.
October 20, 2023