Few climates are conducive to effective outdoor growing so most plant cultivators are innovating and implementing various means and procedures for growing their plants indoors.
The industry standard in growing plant indoors is the hydroponics system. What is hydroponics?
Hydroponics is typically when plants are grown without using soil. Instead, it makes use of minerals and nutrients which are dissolved in a water solution.
Most of the hydroponics systems are applied for indoor growing since growers can control various conditions such as lighting, heating and even the levels of nutrients.
Nowadays, hydroponics systems are installed with LED growth lights for better precision when it comes to controlling their plants’ growth without the presence of sunlight. Plants which are grown indoors require a specific type of light which boosts their growth. The good thing is, this very specific type of light is produced by LED lights.
Why go for LED lights?
The answer is simple – the cost of the standard lighting system for growing plants indoors is too high. In fact, around 90% of the electric power which is used for powering a standard hydroponic only goes to waste since most of the energy used is wasted. It’s a heat rather than light. Traditional grow lights require cooling devices to prevent them from overheating and that leads to additional costs. Not to mention, fluorescents emit noise, have high voltage ballasts and need mounting equipment. This is unnecessary with LED lamps.
Light – Intensity vs. Brightness
Most people are confused whether a standard fluorescent and HID light look brighter than LED or not. While brightness might be defined by how things ‘appear’ to us, the scientific definition of light intensity is the amount of photons which are able to hit an area for a certain period of time.
LED lamps target the plants’ wavelengths with incredible precision thus helping them grow and flower at the optimal level. Meanwhile, HID lights emit unnecessary yellow and green spectrum light which might look bright to the human eye but is in fact entirely unnecessary for a plant’s optimum growth. High quality LED grow lights feature a 95% efficiency rating which simply means that growing plants can absorb 95% of all the light which is emitted. Traditional lights, on the other hand, only have about a 5% efficiency rating.
LED light options
You have plenty of options when it comes to choosing an LED grow light. You can choose the standard grow board or the UFO grow light. Regardless of your choice, you have to consider keeping the balance between blue and red LED lights on your grow lamp. It should be within the standard ratios which are 4:1 and 8:1 red:blue. Also, the wavelengths of the lights must be approximately 660nm for red lights while 460nm for blue light. Keep in mind that the ratio of your LED grow lights must be guided by what plants you want to grow.
