Simple LED Grow Light Setup

Okay its winter and now it’s time to bring your plants inside and set them up to be stronger and healthier for spring time. Now comes the question of setting up your indoor led grow light system. There are a couple of things that you are going to have to purchase for things to run more smoothly.

Materials amounts will vary depending on the amount of plants that you have. The list that is provided here is for growing a single tomato.

-          The first thing that you are going to need is a light source. If you are going to use a led grow light then either use a blue or full spectrum led grow light. This will ensure that you are going to have full strong roots and a hearty stalk for a good solid foundation.

-          Extension cord

-          Metal trash can or a plastic one that you can fit the set up into and cover with tin foil.

-          Fertilizer I prefer the 10-10-10 to start out with. This ensures even natural growth of roots. You can you which ever kind you like this is just my personal preference

-          Flower pot with a good drainage. A milk jug cut in half is really good for this. Just poke holes in the bottom and place a deep place underneath to provide drainage.

-          Potting soil mixed with some good compost material such as old bananas or ground up salad mix.

-          A car wash sponge or a new one from the kitchen sink will do.

-          Seeds

-          Power drill and screws.

  1. After you have gathered all of your materials find your ideal set up area.  This area should be quite, out of the way and not able to gotten to by small kids or animals.
  2. Once you have done this mix the a half a cup or the fertilizer in with your compost soil. Now tear up a piece of the sponge and put the seeds into it and plant the seed sponge into the soil. For tomatoes it is about ¼ to ½ inch deep.
  3. Now put the container into the trash can center it in the middle.
  4. Now depending on the type of led grow light set up that you have screw either screw the light bracket to the trashcan lid or find a way to attach it somehow.
  5. After this water the plant container and turn on the light for the next couple of weeks and check to make sure that it has enough water.
led grow light

simple drawing of led grow lights system

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Things To Look For When Buying LED Grow Lights

In order to pick out the best led grow lights you first have to know the difference between the types that are out there on the market of today. There are many factors that play into picking out the right grow light, all of which are based on electrical efficiency, light spectrum output, light intensity output (lumens) and cost.

What is electrical efficiency?
Electrical efficiency can be defined as how efficient an electrical unit uses its power. This is a useful thing to consider when buying grow lights for a couple of reasons. The first reason that this information is useful is because the grow lights will be drawing power and burning up your power bill. The second reason that this is important is because you want to know of the power being drawn how much is actually being put to good use such as feeding your vegetables.

What is light spectrum output?
This is very important to any kind of plants growth, determining the where on the light spectrum your grow light shows light from is will determine if you are going to have strong healthy fruits and vegetables or if you are going to have a weak diseased plants. In general just remember blue in the beginning and orange in the end. This will help you to remember which type of light to put on your plants and keep them in the right order.

What are lumens?
Without getting all technical and dorky on you this pretty much tells you how much light you can expect a light bulb or light source to emit. An example of this would be that a candle on a dinner table emits 12 lumens. Just remember the higher the number the better.

Ah the almighty dollar.
This is probably the most motivating factor of which type of grow light set up to purchase. Just keep in mind however that sometimes you get what you pay for meaning that you might find a really cheap incandescent grow light but you also might produce some really weak tomatoes from it as well. Just keep this in mind that sometimes paying a little bit more will help you out a whole lot in the long run.

Other Things To Consider When Buying Grow Lights
One of the biggest things that people forget about when buying a grow light set up is the space that they are going to be putting it in. try and make sure that you are taking into consideration of how large the area that you are putting the set up in is.

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Are All Grow Lights Created Equal?

By this point in the game you should know that all grow lights are not created equal because of the qualities that we talked about in the earlier post things to look for when buying led grow lights. Now that you know which to look for in a grow light it is now time to go over the different types of grow lights that are out on the market today. The types of lights that we are going to be going over today are fluorescent, metal halide, high pressure sodium, incandescent, and of course the LED grow light. We will be looking at the pros and cons of each light.

Fluorescent Grow Lights- Emit soft white and warm white light tones
Pros- to having these types of grow lights is that they are cheap and inexpensive, and are able to be used for the vegetation stages of growing plants, they are great for the starting phase of growing plants from seeds, for the most part they have a long life span. An example of oneis the T5 grow light Cons- the biggest con of using these types of lights is that they produce less lumens per watt than other types of grow lights such as the led grow light.

High Pressure Sodium Grow Lights or HPS Grow Lights – Emit a yellowish orange and red tones
Pros- using these lights during your times of harvest or reproductive phase will result in large amounts of fruits, vegetables and flowers. These types of grow lights are among the best in the field as they emit high levels of lumens per watt. Cons- They are NOT cheap, and if these are the only ones that you use then you will have tall lanky plants that will crumble under their own weight.

Metal Halide Grow Lights or MH Grow Light- Emit blue to green tones in the light spectrum
Pros- these types of lights are the best when they are used to get the plant up and running per say. These grow lights are used to produce strong root and stem plants, they are best used in conjunction with HPS grow lights. These lamps are the number one for most serious high end growers as they are for the most part an all around grow light. Cons- These are as well not cheap,

Incandescent Grow Lights- Emit a lot of red tones and a little blue tones
Pros- They are not that expensive and can be great beginning lights to use. Cons- The produce a lot of heat in relation to their wattage and lumen qualities.

LED Grow Lights- Emit blue, green, red, orange, yellow, white, or full range tones of the light spectrum
Pros- yield high quality plants, which produce great fruits, can be put pretty close to the plant in consideration to the other types of grow lights, put off very little heat, last for very long time. Cons- they are expensive.

If you are thinking of doing more than just your garden with lights and want to add some walkway lighting

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Benefits Of LED Grow Lights

Benefits of led grow lights
Today we are going to be talking about some of the various benefits of led grow lights. as we all know the most important benefit of any type of grow light is that you are able to grow fruits vegetables and other types of plants and trees inside without the use of the source of the sun. this is so crucial as because in the beginning of a plants life starts it requires huge amounts of uv rays that are often times put off by the sun, or in the case of grow lights artificial light.

What you may not know is that they are different benefits to the different types of grow lights that you use. But the grow light with the most benefits is the led grow light. One of the best benefits of this type of grow light is that unlike many other type of grow lights led ones do not put off a lot of heat. This translates into the lamp being able to be put closer to the plant which means the plant is getting better light. All of which means that you are getting the same amount of work out of a smaller wattage light than that of a light with a much higher wattage.

The next advantage of using led grow lights is that you get more coverage of the light spectrum from a single light. This is unlike many of the other grow lights where you only get one end either blue or red, and if you want to full fruit bearing plants then you would have to change types for every stage of the plants development. Led grow lights use the light emitting diode that uses all of the spectrum so that you get healthy plants will only one type of light.

There are some downsides to using led grow lights but they for the most part are superficial. The first downside is that your plants are not going to look anything like they did when the led light is off. Led light puts off a very odd look that some people do not take much of a liking to. If this is you then you might want to use the other type of grow lights. The next downside is the price, but just consider that it only takes one led to do the job of two other lights because you must change the light to get the desired results. This means that you have to buy two lamps which would equal way more than one led.

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Do LED Grow Lights Work And A LED Grow Light Review

Are you thinking about buying some led grow lights but do not know which kind to buy or if they work or not? There are many great LEDs out there on the market these days and today we are going to be talking a little bit about if they how they actually stack up against other grow lights and some of the top LED lights out there.

The first thing that we need to go over is whether or not these types of grow lights actually work or not. One of the huge benefits of LEDs is that they consume less than half of that of other types of grow lights such as metal halides or HPS lamps. Another thing that makes these grow lights better alternatives to HID lights is that they run anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 hours as compared to others that run for only 18,000 or 30,000. The next thing that makes LED lights good alternatives or additions to your growing operation is the heat factor or lack thereof I guess you would say because there is little heat generated by LEDs. So I guess to answer the question yes the LED grow light does indeed work and it does work well indeed.

Now that we have established that these lights work it is now time to check out some of the different LEDs that are out there on the market.
The first one that we are going to be talking about is the:

UFO LED Grow Light- Range from $499 and up
This grow light is said to one of the best things to hit the grow light market in a very long time, some of the reasons that this is being said is because it only draws 80 watts and puts out the light that a 400 watt high powered sodium setup could do, all the while putting off almost no heat which equals being closer to the plant which means faster growth and more photosynthesis.


Supernova LED Grow Lights- Range from $700 and up
These LEDs put out more light intensity than a 1,000 HID system does. One setup is capable of lighting a five foot by five foot area. These lights put out three times the amount of light of regular LED grow lights; they are also set up so that you can point them in various directions with different colors.

Penetrator LED Grow Lights- Range from $275 and up

These LED indoor grow lights claim to use a 60 degree setup instead of the normal 120 degree setup which makes for more focused and better absorbed light. Also these LEDs are supposed to more accurately cover a coverage area due to the more focused light.

Light Blaze 400 LED Grow Lights- Range from $ 597 and up

Claims to replace a 400 watt HID grow setup. Excerpt from website “The LightBlaze 400 is housed in a durable black-anodized aluminum casing with an ultra-transparent acrylic window. The silent cooling fan whisks heat away through the side vents keeping the device cool and stable for any length of time. An intensity dial on the side of the light allows you to adjust the output brightness according to your needs.
Our newest LightBlaze 400 is known for its excellent flowering abilities through the use of PARBlend™ Technology.”

Grow Panel Pro- Starts at $ 1299.99

Is said to replace the a 1000 watt MH/HPS system.  Also from the website ” the GrowPanel Pro will provide ample coverage for a 50 square foot growing area. When used as recommended, the GrowPanel Pro® will pay for itself in a little over a year. (based on the national average of 10 cents per kilowatt hour)” ,50,000+ hour life cycle and it weighs only 19 lbs

Grow Spot- Starts at $ 99

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