Grow lights... trying to get past the misinformation and hype and high prices.

[iamwhatiseem]

We want to try a grow room with the spare building we have on the property.
Looking into grow lights... first thing I noticed is wildly different pricing and grossly irresponsible advertising that Amazon allows. (They get away with false advertising like no one else)
Learned from watching several growers on what to watch out for. Outright lying on watts, lying on spectrum ability, lying on sq. footage coverage.
Anyone here have grow lights? What do you have, how have they performed?

 

[Circe]

We want to try a grow room with the spare building we have on the property.
Looking into grow lights... first thing I noticed is wildly different pricing and grossly irresponsible advertising that Amazon allows. (They get away with false advertising like no one else)
Learned from watching several growers on what to watch out for. Outright lying on watts, lying on spectrum ability, lying on sq. footage coverage.
Anyone here have grow lights? What do you have, how have they performed?

I used grow lights since 1970. (The Park Seed several tier system --- they are out of business but I am using the shelving for a pantry now since I have a greenhouse: progress!)

Big issue: you can, and I did for decades, just use regular fluorescent lights. It works great and it's a WHOLE lot cheaper than the crazy-claim lights.

 

[whitehall]

Since normal veggies aren't specified I suspect the grow lights might be the source of a marijuana crop.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

I used grow lights since 1970. (The Park Seed several tier system --- they are out of business but I am using the shelving for a pantry now since I have a greenhouse: progress!)

Big issue: you can, and I did for decades, just use regular fluorescent lights. It works great and it's a WHOLE lot cheaper than the crazy-claim lights.

Thanks... looked into that, and yes, I see there are plenty of long term growers that used fluorescents successfully for years. That is what I will try first... definitely don't want to invest $1000 in lights and decide the hobby sucks.
And what I want to grow is vegetable.

 

[Circe]

Thanks... looked into that, and yes, I see there are plenty of long term growers that used fluorescents successfully for years. That is what I will try first... definitely don't want to invest $1000 in lights and decide the hobby sucks.
And what I want to grow is vegetable.

Well, if it's legal you could consider a greenhouse. DON'T buy one of those "greenhouse kits" --- they blow away every light breeze, down the road they go. But a nice greenhouse made of sound 2 x 4s and greenhouse plastic (you can buy big sheets of it and cut it) will last forever: mine has.

 

[Disir]

I have some grow lights from Amazon. They are pretty cheap.

I started following this guy:

There are a couple of them on the app and they might have some really good knowledge.
I just started within the last few years being able to keep my plants alive. As it turns out, they do actually need to be watered. I am in the gathering information stage.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

We want to try a grow room with the spare building we have on the property.
Looking into grow lights... first thing I noticed is wildly different pricing and grossly irresponsible advertising that Amazon allows. (They get away with false advertising like no one else)
Learned from watching several growers on what to watch out for. Outright lying on watts, lying on spectrum ability, lying on sq. footage coverage.
Anyone here have grow lights? What do you have, how have they performed?

I go to Mr Canucks grows videos

 

[iamwhatiseem]

One thing... wow... you can't really find fluorescent light fixtures anymore!
They are all actually LED strips that are really low wattage which doesn't work.
Found what I thought was awesome, LED strip lights that are not grow lights, but have 3 settings - warm/daylight/bright. So I thought "hey I can buy several of those and set them at those different shades to get the spectrum of old fluorescent. But they were only 40 watts. Nowehre near bright enough.
Still searching.

 

[toobfreak]

We want to try a grow room with the spare building we have on the property.
Looking into grow lights... first thing I noticed is wildly different pricing and grossly irresponsible advertising that Amazon allows.

YOUR FIRST MISTAKE: Shopping with Amazon.

Anyone here have grow lights? What do you have, how have they performed?

I know all about them.
Grow lights simply have a broader spectrum than ordinary lighting, with incandescents, that is achieved by simply filtering the light through a blue tinted glass. Much better are the florescent tubes which use a combination of enhanced spectrum and filtering. Most recent on the market now are the LED grow lights which can be made to radiate full spectrum directly with a mixture of LEDS without the need of filtering.

Grow lights tend to look purple, but not necessarily anymore.

What you buy and how you use them will depend on what you are trying to grow. For most plants, florescent grow lights up close to the plant will work fine but no more than 18 hours a day as all plants need at least six hours of darkness.

More vital tropical plants will need higher wattage, larger distance, and with the addition of even some UV tanning lights as well a few hours a day to give the full spectrum. Whereas the blue light tens more towards leave and stem development, the red end of the spectrum is needed for root and flower development.

Here is a good general option for most people: equal to about a 60 watt bulb, cheap to operate, simple, cool, compact, convenient, and gives off a "white" colour from the people who invented the light bulb:

LED Grow Lights

Our long-lasting, energy-efficient LED grow lights emit a natural light quality, helping create an optimal indoor gardening space for your plants to thrive.

www.gelighting.com

GE Grow Light LED 9W Balanced Light Spectrum BR30 Light Bulb (1-Pack)

Grow your plants throughout the year: These LED grow lights for indoor plants (full spectrum) provide the perfect high-quality plant light that will allow...

www.gelighting.com

 

[iamwhatiseem]

YOUR FIRST MISTAKE: Shopping with Amazon.


I know all about them.
Grow lights simply have a broader spectrum than ordinary lighting, with incandescents, that is achieved by simply filtering the light through a blue tinted glass. Much better are the florescent tubes which use a combination of enhanced spectrum and filtering. Most recent on the market now are the LED grow lights which can be made to radiate full spectrum directly with a mixture of LEDS without the need of filtering.

Grow lights tend to look purple, but not necessarily anymore.

What you buy and how you use them will depend on what you are trying to grow. For most plants, florescent grow lights up close to the plant will work fine but no more than 18 hours a day as all plants need at least six hours of darkness.

More vital tropical plants will need higher wattage, larger distance, and with the addition of even some UV tanning lights as well a few hours a day to give the full spectrum. Whereas the blue light tens more towards leave and stem development, the red end of the spectrum is needed for root and flower development.

Here is a good general option for most people: equal to about a 60 watt bulb, cheap to operate, simple, cool, compact, convenient, and gives off a "white" colour from the people who invented the light bulb:

LED Grow Lights

Our long-lasting, energy-efficient LED grow lights emit a natural light quality, helping create an optimal indoor gardening space for your plants to thrive.

www.gelighting.com

GE Grow Light LED 9W Balanced Light Spectrum BR30 Light Bulb (1-Pack)

Grow your plants throughout the year: These LED grow lights for indoor plants (full spectrum) provide the perfect high-quality plant light that will allow...

www.gelighting.com

Vegetable such as Spinach, Green Beans, Tomatoes, peppers

 

[toobfreak]

Vegetable such as Spinach, Green Beans, Tomatoes, peppers

Then all you need are a few of the grow lights above for every square yard of area. Or if you are really serious and big budget, you can go with big commercial lighting:

Seedling Grow Lights & Kits - Greenhouse Megastore

Give young plants the right amount of light to thrive with indoor grow lights and supplemental greenhouse lighting. Shop top brands with a low price guarantee.

www.greenhousemegastore.com

Particularly things like peppers and tomatoes benefit from full sun, so I would start by investing in a cheap luxmeter. You can get a pretty nice enough one for $17 at Walmart:

Robot or human?

Then figure that:

• An overcast day is at best 2,000 lux
• Shade on a bright clear day is about 20,000 lux
• And full, bright, direct sunlight ranges between 100,000 to 120,000 lux

From that, you can measure and figure on the number, placement and distance of your lights, obviously, the CLOSER they are the brighter, but also the narrower the coverage (don't forget the SIDES of the plants).

And of course, you don't hit plants with that ALL DAY as light is only that intense at MIDDAY. Morning and evening can be up to only a TENTH that, and mid morning and evening about a QUARTER.

That assumes of course you also plant in a good loose rich loam full of sand and conditioners like perlite, vermiculite, or such to hold water and nutrients, but allow root development and drainage, and you will have some fine fucking happy plants! Good luck.

 

[odanny]

I don't know if your state has legalized marijuana, but I was in Lowes yesterday and to my amazement they had a small section of various grow lights for sale, with the information boards on which one did what (nothing about marijuana). I knew then I lived in a state where marijuana is legal.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Then all you need are a few of the grow lights above for every square yard of area. Or if you are really serious and big budget, you can go with big commercial lighting:

Seedling Grow Lights & Kits - Greenhouse Megastore

Give young plants the right amount of light to thrive with indoor grow lights and supplemental greenhouse lighting. Shop top brands with a low price guarantee.

www.greenhousemegastore.com

Particularly things like peppers and tomatoes benefit from full sun, so I would start by investing in a cheap luxmeter. You can get a pretty nice enough one for $17 at Walmart:

Robot or human?

Then figure that:

• An overcast day is at best 2,000 lux
• Shade on a bright clear day is about 20,000 lux
• And full, bright, direct sunlight ranges between 100,000 to 120,000 lux

From that, you can measure and figure on the number, placement and distance of your lights, obviously, the CLOSER they are the brighter, but also the narrower the coverage (don't forget the SIDES of the plants).

And of course, you don't hit plants with that ALL DAY as light is only that intense at MIDDAY. Morning and evening can be up to only a TENTH that, and mid morning and evening about a QUARTER.

That assumes of course you also plant in a good loose rich loam full of sand and conditioners like perlite, vermiculite, or such to hold water and nutrients, but allow root development and drainage, and you will have some fine fucking happy plants! Good luck.

Thanks for the advice. I probably would have decided not to make a grow room without the info you gave. There is so much misinformation and fake YouTube videos (popular grower giving reviews on a product that the company sent him to review)
The G.E. $40 grow lights look to be a clear winner for beginners.
Starting with 3 of them, putting the tomatoes in $4 five gallon buckets from WalMart and the spinach/lettuce/herbs etc. in Window box type planters.
Now on to soil types/fertilizer etc. Getting that figured out

 

[Missourian]

We want to try a grow room with the spare building we have on the property.
Looking into grow lights... first thing I noticed is wildly different pricing and grossly irresponsible advertising that Amazon allows. (They get away with false advertising like no one else)
Learned from watching several growers on what to watch out for. Outright lying on watts, lying on spectrum ability, lying on sq. footage coverage.
Anyone here have grow lights? What do you have, how have they performed?

Mrs MOe has some and just ordered some more. I'll ask her about it when she wakes up.

 

[toobfreak]

Thanks for the advice. I probably would have decided not to make a grow room without the info you gave. There is so much misinformation and fake YouTube videos (popular grower giving reviews on a product that the company sent him to review)

No problem. I've grown most anything you can think of: raised bed, container gardening, indoor, I've even had hanging baskets I bought that come late Fall, I thought were just too vigorous and beautiful so brought them inside and kept them alive all winter then took them back out in the Spring. I've grown from seed and from store-bought plants. I've even grown veggies outside in beds that I extended the season using clear plastic tents to trap the light and heat in that I still had veggies growing when there was snow on the plastic.

Starting with 3 of them, putting the tomatoes in $4 five gallon buckets from WalMart and the spinach/lettuce/herbs etc. in Window box type planters. Now on to soil types/fertilizer etc. Getting that figured out

Some further considerations:

• Ventilation: a small fan is good to circulate air and to bring fresh air in so that the CO2 level stays higher around the plants.
• Make sure containers have drainage holes.
• Tomatoes and peppers like nitrogen. A good practice is to mix some bone meal into the soil for phosphorous (flowers and the flowering part of a plant), wood ash or some store bought form of potassium for the roots, and compost, milorganite or some other form of preferably organically bound form of nitrogen for the leaves and stems, just be sure you don't over do it and burn the roots. A good book on soil and fertilizer needs is a handy thing to have. Plus some of that stuff can be dressed on top the soil like a mulch so that it feeds the plants as you water them.
• Get a pH and moisture meter. They are cheap and are like a long rod you stick in the soil with a meter on top. Most veggies like a pretty neutral pH and most of them prefer to go through moisture cycles where the soil is wet but not soggy, then it dries out well before watering again. This will contain disease as well as pull air down to the roots. Don't water unless the soil really needs it. You want to measure several inches down deep inside near the roots. A "dry" soil is when it gets down to maybe 10% moisture, no drier. I often water with the water meter in the soil so I can see when the meter begins to respond and jump up telling me that the water has reached that deep.
• Container gardening usually yields a weaker plant indoors due to no wind and weather so expect to stake up tall plants early once established before roots spread to support them.
• Most all garden veggies like a loam--- some clay for minerals, some sand for drainage, lots or organic matter (the loam) and some vermiculite thrown in there to even out the water retention and release.
• A good way to start seeds indoors is to buy some peat pots and put a few seeds in each. Some come flat and expand once you water them. Once the plant emerges and gets established, you can just plant the whole thing right in the ground, no fuss or bother, but clay pots work well too.

If you want to get fancy, I used to put lights on circuits so that they had lesser morning light and evening light hitting from maybe 45° then for maybe 4-5 hours around midday, hit them with all the lights at once and really drown them in photons. You can light them up to 18 hours a day if you want, more light = more growth. Give them good darkness at night. You'll begin to notice the plants communicating and there will be a different smell to the air at night as they respire. And plants definitely respond to care and affection. Good luck.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

No problem. I've grown most anything you can think of: raised bed, container gardening, indoor, I've even had hanging baskets I bought that come late Fall, I thought were just too vigorous and beautiful so brought them inside and kept them alive all winter then took them back out in the Spring. I've grown from seed and from store-bought plants. I've even grown veggies outside in beds that I extended the season using clear plastic tents to trap the light and heat in that I still had veggies growing when there was snow on the plastic.


Some further considerations:

• Ventilation: a small fan is good to circulate air and to bring fresh air in so that the CO2 level stays higher around the plants.
• Make sure containers have drainage holes.
• Tomatoes and peppers like nitrogen. A good practice is to mix some bone meal into the soil for phosphorous (flowers and the flowering part of a plant), wood ash or some store bought form of potassium for the roots, and compost, milorganite or some other form of preferably organically bound form of nitrogen for the leaves and stems, just be sure you don't over do it and burn the roots. A good book on soil and fertilizer needs is a handy thing to have. Plus some of that stuff can be dressed on top the soil like a mulch so that it feeds the plants as you water them.
• Get a pH and moisture meter. They are cheap and are like a long rod you stick in the soil with a meter on top. Most veggies like a pretty neutral pH and most of them prefer to go through moisture cycles where the soil is wet but not soggy, then it dries out well before watering again. This will contain disease as well as pull air down to the roots. Don't water unless the soil really needs it. You want to measure several inches down deep inside near the roots. A "dry" soil is when it gets down to maybe 10% moisture, no drier. I often water with the water meter in the soil so I can see when the meter begins to respond and jump up telling me that the water has reached that deep.
• Container gardening usually yields a weaker plant indoors due to no wind and weather so expect to stake up tall plants early once established before roots spread to support them.
• Most all garden veggies like a loam--- some clay for minerals, some sand for drainage, lots or organic matter (the loam) and some vermiculite thrown in there to even out the water retention and release.
• A good way to start seeds indoors is to buy some peat pots and put a few seeds in each. Some come flat and expand once you water them. Once the plant emerges and gets established, you can just plant the whole thing right in the ground, no fuss or bother, but clay pots work well too.

If you want to get fancy, I used to put lights on circuits so that they had lesser morning light and evening light hitting from maybe 45° then for maybe 4-5 hours around midday, hit them with all the lights at once and really drown them in photons. You can light them up to 18 hours a day if you want, more light = more growth. Give them good darkness at night. You'll begin to notice the plants communicating and there will be a different smell to the air at night as they respire. And plants definitely respond to care and affection. Good luck.

Buying seeds straight from Burpee... they seem to have some pretty decent info about seeding, proper fertilizer etc.
I bought a timer for the lights... and thanks for reminding me about holes in bottom. I'll have to remember to drill holes in the tomato buckets. I have a oscillating fan in there already.

 

[toobfreak]

Buying seeds straight from Burpee... they seem to have some pretty decent info about seeding, proper fertilizer etc.
I bought a timer for the lights... and thanks for reminding me about holes in bottom. I'll have to remember to drill holes in the tomato buckets. I have a oscillating fan in there already.

Gurney's is great to deal with too.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Heard some good ratings of this brand, already PH balanced