Hi folks. I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for indoor light sources. I live in Colorado and we’re going to start getting snow here before much longer so I’ll have to haul my plants in. I was thinking about using a flexible LED strip for lighting over the winter. I just moved into this apartment a couple months ago and exactly one room gets sunlight on one wall from a west facing window so some supplemental light might be needed for my growing succulent collection.
Just as a heads up to everyone, so not OP obviously; Never buy lamps that are marketed as grow lights; that is just a scam to sell you way overpriced lighting. You also generally don't need to buy these purple lights, because white lamps include these colors already, so unless you go for very specific effects, just buy a full spectrum light. I usually just do a search for suitable light temperature etc for my plants, probably around 4000 K or so, and then buy a led light. Don't buy lamps that can become hot, so as not to burn the plants.
As long as you give your plants enough light they (usually) don’t care about what type. Some do need the higher part of the spectrum to flower, but plant based chlorophyll can transform wavelengths from 400-700nm (PAR spectrum) In general led gives you about 3 micromol per watt while HPS gives 2.15
So a 600w hps gives you about the same mol as a 420w led lamp. This is not important for maintaining a plant over winter but if you are growing lettuce it’s crucial
Interesting. Is that why I see hydroponic setups using those magenta lights for lettuce?
As the plants look green they reflect green light. So when being efficient you’re better off not producing that, and as some plants like the upper parts of the spectrum red is good. Also blue is good as it’s high energy and not green. For lettuce they wants lot of photons. This is measured in MOL - https://hortamericas.com/blog/news/monitoring-is-crucial-for-growing-lettuce-and-leafy-greens-year-round/
So you do not really care about watt, but photons. This is why HPS was the shit up until led arrived. You needed many photons and HPS had more photons per watt than “normal” household lamps.
@Naja_Kaouthia I use LED shop lights from the home improvement store. They were one of the cheapest options I’d found. They aren’t powerful enough to promote vigorous growth but they work well enough for starting seedlings and keeping anything alive.
Nothing useful to add here other than I'm in the same situation as you and I'm interested in hearing what people suggest! Also, I've heard that you can use just regular LED bulbs so I'm curious if anybody has experience with this and/or can recommend some cheap lightbulbs/clip-on bases.
Personally I use E27 PAR (38 degrees) LED lamps, 17 watt power. I have a mix of 3000 K and 4000 K. The reason for these specific lamps is that I found them at a discount and so I bought a large amount. It is nice that they are somewhat directional, so I can aim them at specific plants.
I have a few different ways of hanging the lights by the plants. Most recently, I have set up a rack this way:
The E27 clamps I bought 12 off Ali-Express: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4000793927858.html
The rack is a simple light weight plastic rack that I found in a discount store for $12.
I’ve got some Barrina T5 1ft grow lights that everybody on IKEA Greenhouse Club recommends. I checked the PPFD with Photone, directly under the centre of the light strip: 72.9 at 20cm away, 47.5 at 30cm away, 34.8 at 35cm away. They’ve served me very well; I’ve got plants in a living room that get very little natural light but with these lights they’ve been thriving!
For other plants, I’ve got some GE grow light bulbs. These ones I’ve screwed into table lamps for my smaller plants. For these bulbs, the PPFD measurements I got were 300 at 10cm away 100 at 20cm away (directly under the bulb).
