|
Why LEDs are being promoted as a superior light for growing cannabis than HID grow lights? And its necessary to understand the principals of wavelengths for chlorophyll absorption. The plant uses blue light for growing, and red light for flowering.The process whereby plants grow is photosynthesis, whereby CO2 is converted into organic material using energy derived from sunlight. This energy is absorbed through special proteins containing chlorophyll, but chlorophyll only absorbs light from particular parts of the spectrum. For instance, it uses hardly any "green" light but instead reflects it, hence the reason plants are green. And its here that the first LEDs to be experimented with for growing cannabis got a bad name. They just used a single band of blue and a single band of red. This is fine for simple crops but failed when launched onto the market for more complex plants – such as cannabis. Today’s more sophisticated LED grow lighting systems produce light at the correct wavelengths of growing and flowering cannabis by combining four separate LEDs into clusters, each bulb emitting light at one of the four chlorophyll absorption peaks. For cannabis growing, you want to see lights aimed at 439nm, 469nm, 642nm and 667nm. Because each individual light is specific to a certain point in the spectrum, a system of lights covering say 1m2 will contain percentages of light colours to provide optimum use by the plant at all stages of its growth. The ratio of between 4 – 8:1 red:blue is now often augmented by additional orange components. It’s claimed that up to 90% of LED light is utilised by the plant. In comparison, while HID lights do tend towards one end of the spectrum – i.e., metal halide for blue light, high pressure sodium for red, the light you see is more like an intense standard light bulb: they emit light through all the spectrum. Between 15 and 30% of light produced by an HID is within the wavelengths suitable for cannabis growth. This is why they use led grow lights for cannabis growth.Broad spectrum LED lights really do offer it all to the indoor marijuana grower. LEDs offer power consumption at approximately 15% of a similar HID, long life span of around 50,000 to 60,000 hours, no ballasts, no maintenance costs, no excess heat produced and effectiveness in all stages of the plants life. Broad spectrum LEDs are our pick for indoor growers who want a simple straight forward setup whilst maximizing space requirements and minimizing heat and electricity costs.
Related Articles -
superior light, led grow lights, cannabis growing,
| 
