Grow Lights for Weed

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 02:19:32 +0000

As more and more states legalize cannabis for cultivation and personal use, interest in growing your own weed at home has never been so high. It comes as no surprise that many people are choosing to grow their own marijuana using indoor hydroponics techniques instead of traditional soil-based methods. This is because hydroponics offers many benefits, such as faster growth, higher yields, fewer pests, and a more discreet way to grow cannabis to its fullest genetic potential. But producing high quality marijuana doesn’t come easy. It starts with a good hydroponics system setup – including the best grow lights for weed.

One of the most important decisions an indoor hydroponics growers will make is how their plants will receive adequate light to power them through the vegetative and flowering stages of growth. In fact, grow lights for weed are possibly the single most important element to achieving healthy plants, high yields, and big buds. Let’s look at some of the principal things you should consider before purchasing a grow light for weed, and then review 5 of the best marijuana grow lights on the market today.

Grow Lights for Weed: The Requirements
In the absence of natural sunlight, grow lights play a critical role in indoor gardening. Light is necessary bring about photosynthesis, during which water, carbon dioxide and light provide the energy source for plants to produce glucose and oxygen for their growth. In order to find a suitable grow light for weed, you should consider the following:

Color: Different light sources provide different colors, each with varying energy outputs and wavelengths. Plants need more blue light during the vegetation phase and more red light during the flowering stage. Blue waves tend to be smaller and possess more energy whereas red light waves have a longer reach but with less energy output. Full-spectrum grow lights contain all colors of the sun.

Light Intensity: The brightness of a light determines how much light energy can be absorbed by the plant. Intensity is measured in Lumen output. Low intensity grow lights often produce long, leggy plants because they reach to find adequate light. High intensity lights are superior for growing cannabis because they produce more dense, compact, and higher yielding plants. While you can somewhat increase intensity by moving grow lights closer to the plants, its best to choose a high intensity grow light from the start. For great results, you want something that is capable of delivering the high intensity light with a broad spectrum of colors.

Grow Light Cycle for Weed: When growing cannabis, the vegetative stage of plant growth requires a longer duration of light than does the flower stage. Some grow lights have built-in timers for light cycles (automatically turning on/off lights at set times), while more basic grow lights (without this capability) will need a timer. See our Marijuana Growing Supplies page for timers and other cannabis growing supplies.

Follow this lighting cycle for weed:

Vegetation Stage: 18 hours of light / 6 hours of darkness

Flowering Stage: 12 hours of light / 12 hours of darkness

Different Types of Grow Lights for Weed

Fluorescents

There are two types of Fluorescents: CFL and T5 grow lights. CFL lights are usually twisted in their shape, while T5 grow lights are long and narrow.

Fluorescent grow lights have warm, cool, or full spectrum colors. They are inexpensive, can be used in a standard lighting socket, give-off a pleasant color for indoor environments, provide good temperature control, and have low electricity consumption. The downside is their penetration is less intense. As such, fluorescent lighting tend to produce smaller yields per watt vs. HID and LED, as well as smaller and fluffier buds. They need to be positioned very close to the plant to be effective. Thus, they are not recommended for taller, full sized cannabis plants. Be aware that fluorescents also contain a small amount of mercury.

Bottom Line: Fluorescents are inexpensive, can be effective, and don’t consume a lot of electricity. However, if you want dense, high trichome buds, fluorescents are not your best choice. They do make for a decent supplemental light source to your other grow lights.

High Intensity Discharge (HID)

High Intensity Discharge (HID) grow lights are a step above fluorescents in efficiency and are a favorite among expert growers. They have a awkward shape and are normally used in conjunction with a reflector hood to direct light down towards the plants. Disadvantage to HID lighting their tenancy to running very hot, so exhaust fans are often used to vent the grow tent or greenhouse. Besides ventilation and temperature control, they may also require specific lighting fixtures and ballasts (to mediate the electric currents). So while the initial investment in the light may be lower than LEDs, they do require more investment in other ways, as well as changing light bulbs more often.

The three types of High Intensity Discharge lighting are Metal Halide (MH), High Pressure Sodium (HPS), and Ceramic Metal Halide (CMH, LEC, Light Emitting Ceramic). Metal Halide’s blue hues are particularly good for vegetative growth, while HPS yellow lighting is great for the flowering stage and produce an amazing yield per watt. Ceramic Metal Halide lighting is manufactured with ceramic, thus making them more efficient than standard MH lights.

Bottom Line: HID / MH lights can produce high yields and super quality buds. However, the grow light setup requires more maintenance and safeguards to prevent heating issues.

LED Grow Lights

While HID lighting is certainly efficient, the heating issues are a concern. If you read our Best LED Grow Lights article, you know the primary benefit of LED grow lights is that they can significantly reduced heat output and power consumption vs other lighting sources. LED grow lights often have built-in fans and heat sinks to regulate temperature and ventilation, and they are more energy efficient overall. While the initial cost is higher than the alternatives, LED grow lights can actually save you more money in the long run.

LED grow lights are plug-n-play. You can simply be hang a grow light over your plants and plugged directly into the wall without any other major adjustments. Better LED grow lights can produce the particular spectrum a plant needs for its various stages of growth. Another advantage is their longevity; LED bulbs will not need to be replaced nearly as often as fluorescents or HID. Because of their numerous benefits, we recommend LED grow lights to hydroponics marijuana growers – beginners and experts alike.

Bottom Line: LED grow lights are cost efficient, low maintenance, and have a lifespan of many years. Some cannabis growers use LED grow lights in conjunction with High Intensity Discharge lights to produce high-quality buds, but they can be used as a stand alone grow light for weed with amazing results.

Garden Tips Light Intensity VS Brightness

Thu, 09 Jul 2015 02:38:51 +0000

One of the biggest causes of confusion and disagreement in the world of grow lighting is the word "brightness". The problem is that we constantly use the word colloquially to describe how things "appear" to us – it's a bright sunny day, that bulb is a bit bright, etc. It is no way a scientific definition of light intensity – the number of photons hitting a specific area over time – and ignores wavelengths of light that humans are less sensitive to.

Take as an example an X ray light source. Is this bright? Well you can't see it and you wouldn't be able to read a book using X rays. But when you consider that a very short burst from an X ray machine can pass straight through you onto a film plate, casting shadows only where your bones got in the way, you have to conclude that maybe brightness and intensity aren't one and the same thing after all.

Likewise, because LED Grow Light accurately target the wavelengths preferred by plants they both don't need to be and in fact don't seem so bright to us, even though they are actually delivering a greater amount of "useful" light. That perception is further bolstered by the fact that HIDs emit a lot of light in the green/yellow part of the spectrum which increases their perceived intensity to the human eye (unlike plants we favor light around the 550 nm mark). But the fact is that they are just wasting all this additional light since it is of little benefit to plant life.

If we take a 400w HID as an example, about 260 watts of that will actually be completely outside the Photosynthetically Available Range (PAR) so at least 65% of the light (and the energy used to produce it) is completely wasted. So with less than 40% of the light generated by HPS and MH lamps being absorbed by plants, and barely 10% of the electricity you pay to run them being actually converted into light in the first place this is not looking promising for conventional lighting (on these figure about 4% of the input energy ends up doing some good for the plant).

Some LED grow light systems do indeed include additional wavelengths, simply to enhance the visual appearance of the plants since foliage often looks black when lit purely by blue and red light. But there is no getting away from the fact that plants benefit enormously from the capability with LED lamps to smoothly vary the balance between blue and red exactly as needed. Seedlings do better with the balance in favor of blue light, while crop yields can be significantly boosted by switching over to red towards the end of the growing cycle. In this way you can simply replace All blue led grow light for early growth and all red led grow light used later in the cycle with a single, dynamically variable solution that reduces running costs and maintenance issues at the same time.

LED Grow Lights For Sale in New Zealand Blog.

Grow Lights for Weed

Garden Tips Light Intensity VS Brightness