GardenGnome
Greener Thumb
Posts: 755
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2012 6:26 pm
Location: paradise,ca

what grow lights do you use?

I have a mix of sunlight,sunshine and aquarium and plant.
On my heating mat above I have a A/P single spot light.
Above my lower trays I have four 2 feet bars 2 A/P 1 sunshine and 1 sunlight
Above my top trays I have 2 four foot bars I think there sunlight.
And I have 2 extra not in use A/P spot lights.

The 2 foot bars I got for diffrent people.
The single spots I got from the stores. A guy at ace said there mostly used for color and leaf growth. Are they still useful?
What's the diffrances between sunlight and sunshine?

dustyrivergardens
Green Thumb
Posts: 617
Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 8:32 am
Location: Holbrook Az. zone 5b

1cool white 1grow light 4 footers

GardenGnome
Greener Thumb
Posts: 755
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2012 6:26 pm
Location: paradise,ca

What does the cool white do?
The guy next door was a art hippi guy and made a light box it had a cool white 2 A/P and a sunshine in it.

dustyrivergardens
Green Thumb
Posts: 617
Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 8:32 am
Location: Holbrook Az. zone 5b

well funny you should ask my mother grew African Violets for 50 years selling them and showing them and she told me to use 1 cool white and 1 grow so there you go best I can come up with that's all I have ever used...

GardenGnome
Greener Thumb
Posts: 755
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2012 6:26 pm
Location: paradise,ca

Guess ill have to look up each one I'm supprised thereisnt a topic set. Thanks.

User avatar
klevelyn
Cool Member
Posts: 75
Joined: Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:23 pm
Location: Utah, USA

I use 4 ft shop lights. They are inexpensive and have two bulbs. They usually come with 2 cool bulbs. To get a full color spectrum of light that simulates natural sun, you can use one cool bulb and one warm bulb. The light bulbs will tell you on the packaging if its a cool light or a warm light. Cost is about the same.

Cool white fluorescent bulbs provide blue and yellow-green light.

Warm white fluorescent bulbs provide orange and red light but less blue and green light.

I have used shop lights to grow my plants indoors and they work very well.

Good Luck

GardenGnome
Greener Thumb
Posts: 755
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2012 6:26 pm
Location: paradise,ca

Ill have to look up all the light colors to learn more.
I was just jumping around online looking at grow lights and saw red/blue or orange/yellow combos but didn't really know what it was about.
its nice to know you can grow with anything tho.

bethesue
Newly Registered
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jan 02, 2018 4:28 pm

I learned much from the posts, but when I went to Lowes with my info in hand, the guy didn't have the bulbs with 54 watts. He showed me grow light bulbs with 40 watts. Will these work? I bought a hanging fixture 4 ft x 2 bulbs. I won't be growing anything above 6 inches. Thanks

User avatar
MoonShadows
Senior Member
Posts: 149
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 4:50 am
Location: Stroudsburg, PA - Zone 6a

88.gif
88.gif (14.97 KiB) Viewed 13195 times
This thread is about 6 years old. LED's are now the benchmark. Check out Happy Leaf at https://www.happyleafled.com/. I have one of their 33" lights for my kitchen garden. I have NEVER been so pleased with a grow light. My plants look like they are on steroids. My lettuce and spinach have never done so well and been so crisp.

SQWIB
Greener Thumb
Posts: 970
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:21 am
Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

The closer you can get to 6000k the better. Don't go by the "wording" but rather the color temperature in Kelvin.

pointer80
Senior Member
Posts: 233
Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 1:50 pm
Location: northern Michigan

SQWIB wrote:The closer you can get to 6000k the better. Don't go by the "wording" but rather the color temperature in Kelvin.
What lumens do you reccomend?

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

I’m not sure if that is a valid question? The strength/brightness of light depends on how far it is from the plant.

Just for kicks, I used an iPhone luxmeter app and measured brightness at leaf level in my various set ups. Where I know tomatoes would grow and produce fruits, it was +/- 2200 but where I knew for a fact that even leafy greens were stretching for light, it was about 800. But the measurement fluctuated wildly even depending on the angle and slight elevation changes so the app could have been faulty or there is that much variation. Directly below vs. off to the side limit of light pool showed big difference too.

As long as you are aware, though, you can position different plants according to their light needs.

I like fluorescent lights for the balance between good light and slight heat — not too hot as to burn so can get close as long as not touching or minimum distance depending on tube size is maintained, but provides that extra bit of warmth that makes the difference in the dead of winter like now when overnight energy-saver set temp even in the house can drop to upper 50’s. In my Garage V8 Nursery, it has been as cold as upper 30’s and keeping just above freezing by running the lights 24/7. (34 when the lights went out).

I remember reading about someone testing out a new LED set up and discovered his seedlings grew better under identical conditions/treatments (measured light levels, etc) with fluorescents. He concluded it was the temperature difference.

SQWIB
Greener Thumb
Posts: 970
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:21 am
Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

I have 6000k led tubes in my one grow area (hanging from the ceiling), and the plants do great, the led doesn't throw as much heat as the fluorescent bulbs.
Image

Image


If I could do it all over again I would use 8 of the 6000k led bulbs for my grow table, I believe the fluors are 4500k and the led's are 5000k that I have in there now.
Image


I like the idea of less heat causing less evaporation and possible Sun Scald (yes had that happen with my mater plants)

User avatar
MoonShadows
Senior Member
Posts: 149
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 4:50 am
Location: Stroudsburg, PA - Zone 6a

pointer80 wrote:
SQWIB wrote:The closer you can get to 6000k the better. Don't go by the "wording" but rather the color temperature in Kelvin.
What lumens do you reccomend?
"Lumens are for humans." Lumens are a measurement of brightness as perceived by the human eye.

If you look at the mid-range of the spectrum, sandwiched between the blue to red wavelengths are the green, yellow and orange wave lengths. The green radiation is mainly the part that the human eye perceives as "brightness". You could say our eyes are biased towards the green wavelength. While plants use the green, yellow and orange wavelengths, they rely most heavily the blue wavelength during their vegetative phase and the red wavelength during their flowering or fruiting stage.

When choosing plant lights, some say look at the Kelvin output, but I am more concerned specifically with the PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) output, which is the radiation from 400 to 700 nanometers that plants are able to use in the process of photosynthesis, the blue to red part of the spectrum.

SQWIB
Greener Thumb
Posts: 970
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:21 am
Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

Hope this isn't against the rules

Read This

User avatar
MoonShadows
Senior Member
Posts: 149
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 4:50 am
Location: Stroudsburg, PA - Zone 6a

Good article for someone just starting off with indoor growing to learn about lighting...non-technical and easy to understand. Thanks for posting it. I think I will link to it from the resources section on my website. BTW...to my knowledge, I don't think it is against the rules to link to an article or site if it furthers the discussion as long as it is not an affiliate or sales link.

imafan26
Mod
Posts: 13961
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

I am lucky I don't have to deal with indoor gardening much. The only grow light I use is the sun.

User avatar
Hillbilly Homer
Full Member
Posts: 28
Joined: Sun Dec 31, 2017 3:04 pm
Location: USA MO Hardiness zone 5b

I made this LED one for my aquarium plants but found it was over kill and started using it for starting garden plants.
15x3w 30000k color temperature 10x5° lenses 5x30° all on scrap aluminum frame... :D
Attachments
gt 10 m.jpg
gt 10 m.jpg (160.83 KiB) Viewed 13312 times



Return to “Seed Starting Discussions”