

“By knowing how day length affects plant development in photoperiodic species, we can manipulate the natural photoperiod to promote vegetative growth (such as to bulk up plant size or for cutting production) or flowering, whichever is desired.” Erik Runkle, University of Michigan.Ī timer is an oft overlooked part of your indoor hydroponic garden, but it’s key to getting the best from your lights and from your plants. If you want a bumper crop of strawberries or peppers, you need to make sure your bulb is producing enough blue light. There’s a few specialized crops that are harvested at the bud stage, but remember that flowers lead to fruit. Herbs like basil and vegetables like kale do just fine with LED grow lights that have a lot of red light output.īlue light is best for flowering plants. Red light promotes foliage growth, and grow lights that produce a lot of red will encourage leaves. When it comes to choosing the right grow light, a good grow light needs to produce a lot of red and blue light.
BEST CHEAP GROW LIGHTS FOR SEEDLINGS HOW TO
Consequently they’re cheap to run and won’t heat up your grow space.ĭiscover: How to make your own AeroGarden pods Even a large full-spectrum LED light fixture will use less power than an equivalent florescent or HID version. They’re very efficient, and turn almost all of their electrical uptake into light. They use small LED diodes that emit light when a current passes through them. LED grown lights are my preferred type of plant grow light.

They put out intense levels of light and can illuminate a substantially larger indoor grow area than their more energy efficient counterparts.

HID lights are some of the most powerful grow lights on the market. As the electricity flows through the gas it glows brightly. They run a current through a chamber filled with a noble gas, sparking across a gap between two electrodes. High-intensity discharge (HID) lamps (commonly metal halide and high pressure sodium) are another form of bulb used for grow lights. While they’re more efficient and less prone to overheating your plants, they don’t always provide the best full-spectrum support for your plants. They also burn out quickly, and to boot produce a light that isn’t always the right type to help a plant grow.įluorescent lights aren’t much better. They’re inefficient, converting much of their electrical uptake to heat rather than light. Incandescence bulbs as a whole are largely on the way out these days. The filament is usually a material with poor electrical conductivity, so it heats up and begins to glow. Incandescent grow lights run electricity through a filament.
BEST CHEAP GROW LIGHTS FOR SEEDLINGS DOWNLOAD
BONUS: Download my 41-Page Garden Planner – From Seed to Harvest
