Horticulture Lighting Group HLG Blackbird Quantum Board LED Grow Light VS SUNRAISE QB3000 Dimmable LED Grow Lights with IR
LED grow lights are an artificial light source. They are generally electric lights designed to stimulate plant growth by emitting a light appropriate for photosynthesis. The primary benefits of LED over the more traditional light sources are that they significantly reduce heat and power consumption.
For the best possible results and high yield, you might want to try the best LED grow light in the market. There are hundreds of LED grow lights in the market, but not all are right for your grow room. When selecting the best, you need to ensure that it meets each of these criteria, we are going to discuss in this article to produce the highest yielding plants.
Advantages of LEDs
Color: LED lighting will emit a specified color of light with no need for filters, and that means less to buy at start-up.
Slow failure: LEDs fail by dimmer overtime versus the immediate failure of other lighting solutions.
Efficiency: LED lights produce more lumens per watt than incandescent lighting. LED efficiency isn’t affected by the shape or size the way it is with fluorescent lights or tubes.
Warmup: LEDs warm up quickly, full brightness in about a microsecond.
Cycling: LEDs are perfect for applications requiring frequent on-off cycling and won’t fail as quickly as other lighting types subjected to cycling.
Cool light: LEDs radiate little heat compared to other horticultural lighting types.
Dimming: LEDs can be dimmed by lowering the forward current or pulse width modulation.
Lifetime: Generally, LEDs have a long, useful life. They require less maintenance too.
Shock resistance: LEDs are solid-state components and durable. They aren’t as fragile as other lighting types.
Horticulture Lighting Group HLG Blackbird Quantum Board LED Grow Light
Features:
The HLG LED Grow Light is the newest addition to Horticulture Lighting Group. It is perfect for 4 x 4 ft grow tents, it features 6 Full Spectrum QB 200 Quantum boards that deliver an even light spread and huge power at just 20 inches from the canopy. The light is dimmable from 100 to 600 watts, helping you save money when your plants don’t need the full output. This light is excellent for flowering and for the full grow cycle. White light has plenty of blue light to veg and tons of red and orange to maximize yields during flowering. The additional 660 nm deep red diodes provide a huge flowering boost for bigger yields and higher potency.
SUNRAISE QB3000 Dimmable LED Grow Lights with IR
Features:
SUNRAISE grow light uses the newest SMD LED Technology to provide a high PAR output, and high energy efficiency. Full spectrum 3000K, 6000K, Red and IR, suitable for all stages of indoor growth providing like sun quality full spectrum for rapid plant response from seed to flower. SUNRAISE QB3000 LED grow utilize both a double-dimmer function as well as a power switch. The dimmer knobs are featured to manipulate the brightness level of the light, allowing flexibility to obtain perfect growth performance for each growing phase. QB3000 LED grow lamp with 6 piece aluminum heat-sink. No fans no noise, we used the highest quality driver for unmatched performance in heat dissipation & lifespan. Saves 50% more energy than other old grow lights!
Growing With LED: What To Consider For Each Stage Of Cultivation
As we touched on earlier, many types of LEDs have a fixed light spectrum that works for both the vegetative (growing) and flowering phases of plants. This way, you can just use the same light throughout your entire grow from seed until harvest.
Although this is convenient for most, there are those who want to fine-tune their lights for best results and optimal efficiency in each growing phase. For this purpose, some commercial LED lights have a switch to activate a veg light spectrum or a flower light spectrum. Here are some more factors to consider throughout each stage of growth.
A) LED Grow Lights And Seedlings
As soon as your seeds have sprouted, your soon-to-be plant will need light to grow. Compared to more mature plants, however, your seedling is much more sensitive to intense light. Because of that, you should be careful when starting out with strong LEDs.
If your LED has a dimming option, turn your light to a lower intensity. If this isn’t an option, consider moving your lights further up, away from the seedling. On the other hand, ensure that you do not move the lights too far up, as this could cause the seedling to grow spindly and lanky.
Likewise, if your LED has a switch to activate either a vegging or flowering spectrum, set it to veg, where the light normally emits a “cooler” blueish light, which is optimal for this stage. Set your timer to 18 hours of light per day, with 6 hours of darkness.
As your seedling grows taller, stronger, and approaches the most robust part of the vegetative growing stage, you can then gradually increase the light intensity.
B) LED Grow Lights During Vegetation
Set your light to 18 hours per day and 6 hours of darkness. Some growers choose to grow with 20–24 hours of light to maximise vegetative growth.
Monitor your plant’s development; if all goes well, it should grow healthy, strong, and bushy. If it grows lanky and spindly instead, this is likely because your plant is not getting enough light. Increase the intensity by lowering the light toward the plant canopy or turning up the intensity using the dimmer if your light has one.
How long you want to veg your plant will normally depend on how much space you have available. You can technically let your plant grow under 18–24 hours of light as long as you want, but there will likely come a time when you want to switch to flowering, as the plant would otherwise simply grow too big. Know that some plants strains can stretch considerably (up to 2x or more) during early flowering. Take this into account upon deciding when to initiate the switch to bloom.
C) LED Grow Lights For Flowering
Photoperiodic plants starts to flower in late summer when the daylight hours naturally begin to diminish. Indoors, the grower is responsible for inducing bloom by setting the light schedule to 12 hours of light and 12 hours total darkness. If your LED light has a flowering switch, turn it to flowering mode.
When your flower indoors on a 12–12 schedule, it is important that the 12 hours of darkness are not interrupted. So make sure that your tent or greenhouse doesn’t have any light coming in from outside. This would otherwise revert your flowering plant back to veg or potentially cause other issues such as hermaphroditism.
If your LED has dimmer, now is the time to turn your light to its maximum intensity, or lower your light to the recommended distance from your plants for the flowering stage. If you are not sure what this distance is, most grow light producers have recommendations available.
Important: if you change anything with your lights, such as when you increase the intensity and/or lower their position, make sure to do so gradually over several days, rather than in one go. Too sudden of a change can stress your plants too much.
Conclusion
There was a time when very few growers would consider, let alone recommend, LED lights for growing plants. But as technology advances, manufacturers have been able to refine the design of these light-emitting diodes to provide a high-quality light source perfect for your growth.
Modern LEDs have come a long way since their initial development and use in practical technology. The advantages of LEDs include lower energy consumption than traditional HID and CMH lamps. Additional improvements include improved durability, small size, and faster switching of the diodes.
