Growing with LED, let’s get started!
Whether you’re new to growing or a seasoned veteran it always helps to know how to use a new product. There are differences between growing with conventional bulb lighting and LED grow lights. Knowing the differences and why they are important will get your indoor garden growing successfully sooner than later.
For starters plants grown indoors under our LED grow lights will act more like outdoor plants. They will also like it hotter and more humid than HPS grown plants. I’ll explain why. Bulbs emit a lot of infrared light (IR) which is pure heat that can burn the plant cuticle. As a result indoor growers kept their grow rooms cooler to mitigate that damage and over time they came to believe that is “how you grow”. Our LED fixtures do not have excess IR so you can let your rooms be hotter and save even more money on power bills!
Did you know that you can take a laser thermometer into an HPS grow and measure the leaf surface temperature on the plant canopy and it will be up to 10 degrees hotter than what the AC is set to? To be successful with LED grow lights, all you have to do is measure the actual temperature of the plant leaves on the canopy then when you swap out the light to an LED fixture just let the room heat up until you reach the same leaf surface temperature and set your AC or exhaust fans to come on at the temperature. Your plants will photorespire and uptake more nutrients that way and you’ll have abundant aggressive growth all while reducing your power consumption and energy bills.
What is VPD and what does it mean to me?
VPD is Vapor Pressure Deficit and although it sounds scary to some it just means that your temperature and humidity levels should be in balance. Hotter air holds more moisture in balance so the warmer the room the more humidity the air will hold and stay in balance. Many of the plant strains we all know and love have tropical or equatorial origins. All we’re looking to do when growing them indoors is to recreate their natural environment. Following the VPD chart makes it easy to do. Just stay in the gold section and follow the recommendations listed. Time to get your indoor grow on!
Post time: Apr-23-2022