What exactly do LED's offer in light, efficiency, overall benefits, etc. Just saw a thread in this forum showing a couple of pics that seem to have been supplemented with LED. The buds look killa. Just curious... I am beginning my own journey with growing and am expecting it to be long term (mich med caregiver)
Look in the Advanced Grow Journals, find both of Rumpleforeskin's LED grows and read through them, and then compare his results against what he had previously been getting under his 400w HPS light. Basically, his 2 grows were "commissioned" by a company that makes and sells LED lights. The consensus in the community is that LEDs have future potential, but the present performance leaves a LOT to be desired.
The performance of LEDs is fine. The manufacturers try to put red/blue in one unit and people leave the blue on for the whole flowering period. That's why they don't flower as well, but they veg better. Mixing in lots of blues with primarily red during full flower seems to do bad things in every grow I've ever seen, regardless of the lighting technology. As you can see from rumple's grows, the plants blew the fuck up in veg, way more than they would with the HPS. And that's half the wattage. And not even ideal LED spectrums (the best spectrum is more expensive by a lot, I guess). LEDs are a bad idea now, because of cost. Eventually they will replace all other types of lighting, for everything really. If you're looking for a low-heat solution now, I'd recommend looking into T5s.
After 10 days of veg on his first LED challenge, the plant was at 12-13 inches tall vs 16 inches on day 10 under a 400w HPS. (His clones get vegged for 10 days) On the second LED challenge, the company told him to veg for 17 days instead of the normal 10. Even after an extra week, the plant wasn't any bigger than with the HPS (under 10 days of veg)