Everything You Need to Know About Grow Lights

Are you looking for advice on which product to buy? Jump to Which Grow Light Should I choose?. The debate around what kind of grow lights you must use is often a hot topic of discussion, and most have a definite opinion on what they think about, or not think about.

A good grow light:

1. Bright light The grow light you use should provide enough and the right wavelengths of light so that the plant grows and does not stop in the development.

2. Energy-saving. That the wattage is low. The lower, the less it costs then.

3. Comfortable light

A light that does not look too unnatural. The more comfortable light the better.

If we begin with the first point, it is important to keep apart the different concepts that are around the lighting and time of plant lighting. We take it from the beginning.

Chili plants are adapted to grow outdoors in the sunlight. Without sunlight they cannot grow, which is one of the reasons why you don't see a lot of flowers in the middle of winter. The sun is an amazing source of light that gives the plants all the energy they could ever need, plus it is free.

The sun gives most of the time in addition to a pleasant light. Our winner is without a doubt the sun! My point is that you can grow and use the sun so do it! A window in the south direction, greenhouses, and other bright locations you may not add extra lights.

If you want to grow outdoors during the spring, summer and autumn you can stop reading now and enjoy all the sun your plant will get. If you want to grow peppers all the year about then continue reading. To return to the first point, strong light! What is the bright light? We take a few references to make it easier:

When the sun is shining outdoors in the middle of the day so is the light intensity at a certain point on the leaves around 100 000 lux. Through a window the chili plants only get around 25-35, 000 lux. Additionally, if it would be a little overcast outside it drops to 5000 lux. As you might notice, subsides the light the more it is filtered. A bright room that is well lit will have approximately 500 lux, where I sit and write this article, I get less than 100 lux.

In the table above, we see that when the sun shines on the most, so we get around 2000 uMol or around 100 000 lux. To get the equivalent of uMol in fluorescent lamps, you would have a lux 148 000.

This data and the calculations come from Apogee instruments manufactures measuring equipment of high quality. Do you want to know more about how they count and measure, so you will find more information here.

Words to know

What is lux and why do I need to know it? When you look at the lights then you will most likely see between two and four different markings. These are

• Watts

The effect a bulb has, not how much light it can deliver.

• Lumen

Luminous flux. Thus, the number of light rays from the lamp.

• Lux

The concentrated amount of light at a point. If 1 lumen hits a surface area of 1 m2 of the surface illuminance ("lights") 1 lux.

• Candela

The strength of the light source. Coming from the light source from a chili grow light. If the light source radiates 1 candela in all directions, the luminous flux per steradian is 1 lumen.

• uMol (PPFD)

The easiest to describe it as the number of photons that hit a surface per second in a wavelength range that plants can take up through photosynthesis.

In other words, it is very easy to become confused! However, there are some things to look at. Lumens and lux belong together. We take a sample calculati

High output fluorescent lighting such as T5

• 24w 1550 lumens = 500 lux at 1m, 120 degree angle

• 21w 1900 lumens = 604 lux at 1m, 120 degree angle

Although one lamp has less watts, so it provides more lumens. More lumens will give more lux, which gives more growth of your plants.

HOW MUCH LIGHT IS REQUIRED FOR A CHILI PLANT TO GROW?

For you to get any growth requires a minimum of 1600 lux or 30 uMol (PPFD). Pepper seedlings survive on less in the beginning, but most plants require more, especially when they develop chili pods. Therefore it is more or less impossible to grow anything indoors without the plant lights in the winter. As I wrote, where I'm sitting is less than 100 lux to compare with the 1600 required for something to be able to grow properly. Or compare with if you put a flower in the window of a summer day when the sun is at and you get around 30,000 lux.

Much heat little light

If we continue along the list, so we will enter the energy-saving. Most of the bulbs that have high wattage generate a lot of heat and little light. This is not a good combination because it is light the pepper plants want, not the heat (well, some heat, of course). As the earlier mentioned there is a correlation between watts and the number of light bulbs can produce.

There are HPS (High pressure sodium) and MH (metal halide) lamps produce much light but with great power (250w - 1000w). These consume a lot of power and generates a lot of heat and is difficult to be near them (very light). Let’s skip these, right?!

This leaves us with compact fluorescent bulbs, fluorescent and LED. LED grow lights have without a doubt it has the best longevity and energy efficiency. However, they do cost considerably more to purchase than both compact fluorescent and fluorescent lamps.

Fluorescent tubes and compact fluorescent lamps also differ in other ways, their light scattering and how we experience the light. If we imagine a candle so shines the same in all directions, so it also works as a regular lamp. The problem with this is that our plants do not grow around the bulb without usually. This means that we must make use of reflectors to direct the light in a good way.

These can take a lot of space and may not always be so nice to have in a home environment. However, it is possible to make stylish and creative solutions. LED has the advantage that the light is already directed, examine, however, the angle carefully before you buy when it in some cases can be very narrow.

The last point I think is important for a good plant lighting is all about how we who are in the room experiencing the light. A problem with LED is that the diodes are adapted to the PAR spectrum, which means that they are more blue-red in color. This allows the color of the leaves become purple. To get a more pleasant light and a slightly wider spectrum, manufacturers have begun adding the green and white diodes to get a more natural light. This is the e.g. done on the space station for the astronauts think it is more pleasant to see the green of the plants. However, it is precisely this that makes the LED so effectively. Instead of "wasting" light in a wavelength at which photosynthesis is worse so do you optimize the light for maximum absorption. This means that even though the effect is lower (watts), the result is still good.

DISTANCE AND COLOR TEMPERATURE

The light decreases with the square which means that doubling the distance, so you just get a 1/4 part so much light. It is therefore important that you have the lighting as close as possible without burning the leaves. How much light the plants need will vary depending on what phase they are in and what type of plant it is. Again, pepper seedlings need less light, while fruiting chili plants need more, nothing strange with that.

The color temperature says nothing about the quality of the light, where different combinations of red, green and blue light can provide the same color temperature. This is especially interesting for us in how we experience the light.

WHAT KIND OF PLANT LIGHTING SHOULD I CHOOSE?

Remember that nothing is comparable with sunshine. In general, it is very much about where and what you grow.

Recommendation

Select the light which suits for your situation. If it is important for you to be able to direct the light without any reflector, so is the LED a better choice that holds better in the long run but is a little more expensive to purchase. The most important thing is that the plants will have a strong and happy wide the light.

Other factors when growing inddors are nutrients and I've written a post about fertilizing your chili plants. Go check it out!

#chili #pepper #hot #LED