I won't be able to grow for at least a year but that hasn't stopped me from doing my research. I'm planning out and buying materials for a grow setup I'm pretty excited about. Here's a very rough outline. Grow space: Basement 10 x 10 meters, 3 meters tall. Plants: 12 total, any or all White Widow / Purple Haze (What do you guys think?) Lighting: LEDs and flourescents only. Money is not an issue, but I lack experience and--finally I get to the point of this thread--LED lights. Anyone out there used them with success? I've followed a couple of LED threads but they both died. I've seen some awesome LED lights and I've emailed several LED companies but most only sell to large (read: corporate) clients. I realize I can purchase regular LED grow lights online but my gut tells me I could get LEDs with the same frequency for a better deal elsewhere Look how cool these are! They have regular Edison screw-ins and they are just 1-watt each! Unfortunately the maker of these bulbs would not return my calls. Anyway, I'd just like to hear your thoughts on LEDs. Does it make sense to go part-flourescent and part-LED with my grow, or should I stick to something more conventional? I was thinking the flourescents would be great for early growth and that the LEDs could take over and save my energy bill.
I know basically nothing on the subect but as far as people who have used them with sucess... check out KamelRedLight's grow here http://forum.grasscity.com/grow-journals/110481-second-cfl-led-bagseed-grow-3.html He's in the last weeks of a CFL + LED light grow, and as you will see is so far sucessful.
Hah hey thanks Y&S! Yeah I use the Solar Oasis plant bar from LEDtronics.com. It won't grow a plant alone, but is good for supplimenting my CFL's. I've had the same problem as you which is why I gave in and bought the expensive bar. The LED's used in these grow lights you see online are a special kind of higher power than you find in most other applications. I've looked for cheap alternatives and haven't really found any that I'd bet on, except by ordering more online. I don't want to tell you to blow tons of money, even if you have it, but it looks to me like the easiest way is to just get the lamps from ledgrowlights.com. Fuck their fixtures, they screw into regular sockets. But theirs look by far the best on the market. If you find a place to get these high powered LED's for cheaper, let me know because I'd like to use mostly LED in my grows.
Thanks for the info, Kamel. I think I found a cheaper LED source, and with Edison screw-ins no less! Maybe I'm celebrating needlessly: these lights aren't grow lights and they are temporarily out of stock but they look as powerful as hell. The link. Can you tell if these could be used as grow lights, Kamel? I'm not sure exactly what to look for in grow lights--I thought frequency was all important but I can't really make sense of the stats. I looked at your grow--kudos--but I was wondering why you don't think LED grow lights will cut it on their own. I know some lights are better than others (metal halide > long flourescent tubes > CFL etc.), but what makes them that way? Frequency, wavelength...what?
Here's a chart I found about growing wavelenghts--got it from a site selling the SolarOasis grow light: A lot of "white" LED lights have a wavelength around 650nm--the most important growing wavelength, apparently--so I think I could probably get a pretty good grow light by using 650nm lamps and also a few lights, perhaps even single super-bright leds, to cover the blue wavelength (around 450nm) which is important as well. I wish I knew more about electronics; I really want to make my own lights for much less money than buying them.
I'm not too sure about those lights. The ones on grow lights are either red or blue, so ALL the light can be used by the plant. I don't know how effective white LED's would be, but I wouldn't imagine they'd be very good. Especially for that price, a CFL would work better. As for differing lights, it goes like this. High pressure sodium lights are the most popular since they are the most cost efficient, produce the most lumens per watt (bout twice as much as metal halide or fluorescent), and focus their light in the orange/red end of the spectrum which is most useful for flowering. Metal halide is best for vegetative growth because it has mostly blue light, but most people don't use it for flowering. They give more watts per lumen than fluorescents, and are damn bright, and give off UVB which is claimed to produce more THC, so if I had one I'd use it for flower (less yield but more potency). Then of course there's fluorescent, my weapon of choice for now. They mostly come in two flavors, soft white and daylight, and there are the tubes and there are CFL's. I like CFL's cuz they're small and I can fit more in my small closet. Tubes run cooler though, plants can touch the bulbs all day long and not get burnt. CFL's will toast any wandering leaf tips but with a fan blowing through the plant I can get them actually inside the plant between branches. This brings up the factor of distance from light, but I'm gettin sick of typing, if you want my theory on that I'll post it. The important thing when getting CFL's is color temperature. 2700k is soft white, the most common type. It mimics the HPS spectrum. Daylights are around 6500k color temperature, and mimic metal halide. So daylight for veg, soft white for flowering. I think a grow can be done with just LED's, and I'd like to do it someday. Just not a solar oasis plant bar. One is not enough for a MJ plant in flower, you'd get a skimpy yield. It'll veg a plant just fine though. I'm really thinking about getting a red and a blue light from ledgrowlights.com, those are more high powered and I could probly go with all LED if I got em. The best part is that you can't even tell these LED lights are on, cuz while they're the brightest spectrum for plants, they're the dimmest for humans. Ahhh and there is the sum of all my research done on lighting.
runner's high, I hope sometime in the future my friend will have these lights for sale. For now, check out my grow solely under LED's. http://forum.grasscity.com/general-indoor-growing/93801-led-lights-pics.html