Ecosunlite

How to choose the good led grow light from many led grow lights brands ?

LED grow lights become quite trending over the last two years in the United States because more and more States‘ law make it legal to plant cannabis or marijuana for home growing for medical or recreational use, in 2022 this year, the number reaches to 24 States that has legalized it.

Besides, more and more people become interested in gardening indoors to cultivate some vegetables(lettuces, cabbages, tomatoes, spinach,Chilli, kale, broccoli, bean, wheatgrass), herbs(mint,ginger,cannabis, marijuana, algae) and flowers(rose, orchid, gladiolus, wildflowers, succulents,citrus) for self-consumption.

Therefore, we can conclude that its popularity in the horticultural lighting, hydroponic and aeroponicslighting industry will be continued and high demand for that growing light in the future will boom for sure.

Why do we need LED lights to grow green-plant weeds?

In some sunshine-rich rural region, it might be not neccessary to use LED lights for plant vegetable growing such as lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, cress, cucumbers and many more floral plant, as the sun rays have all spectrums for plant photosynthesis so that the seeds plant can bud, develop, blossom, flower, yield fruit normally.

However, in some condition, the weather is good or bad, which is out of human control. Sometimes, we might endure extreme weather, there might be insufficient sunlights and the farmer might suffer a huge economic loss during a heavy rain season, so greenhouse farming become a certain way that farmer can control the yield;

Besides of that, some farmer want to shorten the plant growing cycle, and expect an early yielding than general.

Finally, e.g. for urban region, land is a rare resource and some citizens would like to grow some green leafy plant at home but due to shortage of sunshine, but the artificial grow light makes it possible for the plant to grow healthy.

As described aboved, if the plant is not growing outside in the soil, we need to use LED plant grow light to achieve our purpose.

What factors to look at when choosing LED grow light ?

1. Avoid cheap LED chips, well-known brand has long durability, cutting down future repair & maintenance cost. You can choose proper wattage for your application from 400W 600W 640W 720W 960W 1000W LED grown lights from the market.
2. No flickering issue (how to judge easily: use smartphone camera to test) or produce much heat. The flicker might be unnoticeable by naked eyeballs for frequency above 100HZ but can be captured by the camera, a serious flicker issue means its driver is not good. And if the light produces too much heat or you have the light working over 12hrs per day, then you would need a strong and expensive cooling system to get the hot air out, otherwise, the plant might fall into dehydration to die, so keep on eye on the greenhouse ambience temperature.
3. Know what plant to grow, and how tall the plant would get and determine the mounting height.
4. Know your size of growing area and light fixtures quantity you need, then decide if go linear t8 tube grow light or bar grow light
5. Easy to use and flexibility (if it is dimmable by turning a knob kit or can be programmable controlled intensity of light by phone app or the suspension kit height can be coordinated with adjustable rope according to different growth stages ). If the growing area is so extensive, you don’t want to pull power lines inside and require one-time control for all lights, so a linkable connector is better to have.

What is the benefit of LED grow light VS HID and fluorescent grow light ?

HID stands for high intensity discharge lamp, which include metal halide, high pressure sodium ,mercury vapor.

These lamps contain a quartz tube filled with gas and electrodes on either end. An arc of electricity is sparked between two electrodes inside the tube to generate visible light.

Metal halide grow light and high pressure sodium grow light have different light spectrum patterns, so usually, growers would have mixed use for their purposes, e.g. for vegging and for flowering

MH produced blueish light spectrum(over 5500K), has little red light, better to use for lettuce, herbs vegetation or early vegetative stage of flowering plant, while HPS’ hue is yellowish-orange with little blue light(under 3500K), better for tomatoes, orchids, cannabis plant that can flower.

What is PAR value ? And how to measure what is the best LED grow lights ?

PAR is abbreviation of Photosynthetically Active Radiation, a portion of light spectrum utilized by plants for photosynthesis between 400nm-700nm, during this process, the plant give off oxygen.

And light is microscopically known as photons in quantum science, value meassured by Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD), unit is μmol/㎡/s.

The PPFD value actually be different for different spaces, the value in the center is usually bigger than that in the corner.

If you know the covering area of the grow light bulb, you will get the total value PPF= PPFD x area, its unit is μmol/s.

Here, PPFD is a little like the output intensity lux(=lm/m²) of the custom LED light fixture, but please keep in mind:

LED grow light efficiency will never be measured by lumens or lux.

PPF will determine how many units of LED indoor grow light shall be used for the growing spaces.