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Here are several reasons

why you may choose to grow your leafy greens under led lights.

1- you may not have a readily accessible sunny window ledge or you may not have enough of them. I have a kitchen window ledge that gets good sun in summer but very little in winter.

2- using our desk light series you can use the lights to grow your sprouts as well as light the work area of the desk(the shade rotates to  adjust the spread of light). A great break from work to look up and   see your salad growing in front of you, or on your kitchen bench shedding extra  light on your chopping board..

3-you may have a large family or like me like lots of salad so you can easily turn a bookshelf into your own personal salad farm.

4- as mentioned before growing sprouts inside is very convenient and free from animal and insect competition, growing under lights gives you flexibility as to where you do it with limited space, and growth rates are not affected by season, making having an indoor garden that much easier.

5- using the latest low wattage, high intensity LED grow lights, gives you even more options as it is now not only much cheaper to run, 7W vs 15W-28W, 90W vs 400W-600W(salad greens), they can also   be used to grow vegetables to flower & fruit in very short periods of time. eg Tomatoes, Strawberries etc.

 

The Benefits of LED Grow Lights

Running Costs

The main benefit of using LED grow lights is the   lower running costs. The better ones on the market use up to 90% less electricity than comparable Sodium/HID bulbs. LED grow lights can be used as   either a primary light source or a supplemental light and they will pay for   themselves in around 6 months of heavy use. The expected life of a LED grow lamp is on average 100,000 hours. This is 10 to 50 times longer than a typical Sodium/HID grow light bulb.

Purchase Costs

Although initial purchase costs may be higher than   comparable Sodium bulbs, the real costs are often lower because you don't need a   ballast. Unlike fluorescent tubes and metallic vapour lamps that need a ballast   to operate,LED grow lamps don't need a ballast. This eliminates a recurring   cost from your grow room set-up. You also don't have the extra costs of   purchasing a reflector as LEDs have the reflectors built right into themselves.

Grow Season

Since the Chlorophyll does not have to battle with   unwanted light-waves, LED's can also be left on 24 hours a day without stressing your plants out. You can also use LED grow lamps to simply extend the day period of your light cycle by 4/6 hours during the Winter months. This extends your   grow season to 365 days per year.

Benefits To The Environment

Switching to low energy,solid state lighting benefits the environment.The low power requirements of LED light sources make  them ideal for self-contained, solar or wind powered installations,particularly in remote locations. LEDs consume far less energy  than standard   light bulbs, leading to greatly reduced energy costs. LEDs also require far less energy to       manufacture than other light sources, reducing their environmental impact even further. Less Environmental Hazard- Metallic vapour and fluorescent lamps all contain mercury, a heavy metal identified by the U.S. Government as  hazardous to the environment and our landfills. Our LED Lights do not contain mercury.

Targeted Light Output

Broad spectrum grow lights produce a lot of   light waves that plants can't use efficiently. LED Grow Lights only deliver the colours of light used by plants for efficient and healthy growth.

Minimum Heat

LED grow lights are warm to touch and won't scorch young or tender plants as HID lighting can.The high heat generated by a typical  metal halide or high pressure sodium lamp can reach several hundred degrees to over 14 hundred degrees Fahrenheit  at the bulb's surface. This excess radiated   heat output adds to the grow room temperature greatly.Most LED grow lights operate at just a few degrees above room temperature, thus reducing your grow room cooling costs.

Watering

You wont need to water as often if you use LEDs as your  plants will transpire less. If for some reason, you need to leave your grow room unattended for a few days your plants will have a better chance of surviving if  the grow lights are not producing lots  of heat that drys them out.

Humidity

LED grow lights are ideal for plants like Salvia Divinorum and Ferns that have high humidity requirements.Cuttings will also root easily  as they don't suffer as much from the stress of water loss while new roots are forming.

    

 

 

As we know ,the HPS, Incandescent Lamp and Fluorescent Lamp emit all the spectrum of visible light & some sightless light,but LED Grow Lights only deliver the colours of light used by plants for efficient and healthy growth ! 

What do you need?

Red and Blue light is essential for plant growth. It is well known that chlorophyll, which is contained in the green leaves of plants performs photosynthesis. Red and Blue are the wavelengths most essential for photosynthesis.The blue absorption region is 430-450 nm and that of red is 650-670 nm.

Recent research suggests that the ideal balance is 92% red LEDs and 8% blue  LEDs. Although the lamps we use have a higher percentage of blue LEDs and they work fine. Blue has a smaller influence than red light so anything between 1% and 20% of blue light can be selected, depending on your plants and their growth requirements.

When choosing your lamp you want both colours with the same frequency and relative intensity per LED.

These days most LED Grow Lights only deliver the colours of light used by   plants for efficient and healthy growth. By leaving out the wavelengths plants  wont need they provide better energy efficiency than conventional grow lights.

Red Light

Red Light is in the  vicinity of the first peak of a plants light absorption spectrum (660nm) and it  contributes to the plant photosynthesis. Red light, when combined with blue   light, encourages flowering. It can also be used in higher doses to stimulate  flowering, seeding and fruiting.

Blue Light

Blue light is  responsible primarily for vegetative growth (leaf). It is known that chlorophyll has the second distinct absorption peak in the vicinity of blue light  wavelengths (450nm). The blue light is also indispensable to the morphologically healthy growth plant. There is also more sunlight energy in the blue-green  wavelengths.

Lumen and Lux

     These are measurements of how bright a light source appears to the human eye   only. If a grow light manufacturer rates their grow light output in Lumen then they are only telling you how bright the grow light will appear to your eyes and  has NOTHIN to do with plant growth since plants only use a tiny percentage of  the FULL light spectrum that old fashioned grow lights emit.

In fact Chlorophyll  is green for a good reason, plants use this colour as a type of "Sun-block" to remove 95% of the unwanted and damaging light wavelengths. LED Red / Blue   lighting have such narrow bandwidths that plants without green Chlorophyll would   actually survive and never be damaged by the LED's perfect and tailor made light wavelengths. Nearly 100% of the light an LED grow light emits is completely   absorbed by the plant! LED's can also be left on 24 hours and day without stressing plants since the Chlorophyll does not have to do battle with unwanted   light-waves.

The most accurate unit of measurement for grow lights is in microEinstein's, which measures how many photons of light strike an area per second. But it is still not correct to use it for comparing grow lights because of the tiny band  widths of light plants actually absorb.The irradiance power factor or amount of light that actually gets used in plant growth or Chlorophyll production can be   factored at a rate of 400?mol/m?sec per every 150 LED's average since they have   an extra high MCD output.Now remember this rating is 95% growth efficient   light!! All other grow lights except LED grow lights emit mainly wasted light energy that does not help the plant produce Chlorophyll. In fact 95% is wasted  since plants only use very narrow bandwidths of the total light energy. Rating   light output in simple terms like Lumen or Lux is EXTREMELY misleading especially when rating a GROW LIGHT which has a very specific job, like creating  Chlorophyll 'a' and 'b'