LED lighting help

It depends on how old your plant is.

I always use full spectrum on seedlings but some people use the veg only (blue) spectrum for seedlings. Seedlings don’t require a lot of light when they are just stating out.


“Tyranny anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere.” — someone awesome

 

The one that uses the most light (all on) is for flowering.

 

Veg needs less lumens than flower.

 

Most lights with a veg and bloom switch will tell you to not run the light with just the bloom switch on.

You either run the light with just the veg switch on or with both the veg switch and the bloom switch on.

The more blue leaning light is for building a tighter node structure in veg. The disadvantage of those types of light is that in order to change to the blue spectrum they turn about half the leds off. That means it's putting out half the power. I used to veg with a platinum p450. It was 255 watts with all the leds on but in veg mode it's only 137. That was not very powerful and didn't exactly have a great growth rate.

It's good for seedlings to start with the low light intensity but once they start growing generally they'll veg better with all the leds on. Burple leds like that don't cause much stretch anyway. Even in full spectrum. Many of them don't have veg switches and they grow fine start to finish. Having double the power in the area is more important then having a more blue leaning spectrum sometimes.

 

Yes, if it's a photo plant it will be dark cycle sensitive as to when to flower. If it gets more then about 10 hours of uninterupted darkness each night it will start to flower.

If you're low on actual watt draw for the square footage you're covering it's probably better to run them at full power once the plants are used to them if you can maintain the temps.

40-45 watts per square foot for flower is a good ballpark figure for good bud development with those type of leds. For veg you only need about half of that. Sometimes it's a little low to just have the veg switch on. You can experiment with having a few lights in veg and a few on full power if you have more then one.

 

What is the actual watt draw of the lights, not the rating?

 

run the blueish ones when the plants are under 2 inches tall . then click both of them on run that led full spectrum. and in flower run it with both switches on for best results.