Comment on Light sources for winter
Papanca@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
Oisteink@feddit.nl 1 year ago
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
Naja_Kaouthia@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Interesting. Is that why I see hydroponic setups using those magenta lights for lettuce?
Oisteink@feddit.nl 1 year ago
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. For lettuce they wants lot of photons. This is measured in MOL - hortamericas.com/…/monitoring-is-crucial-for-grow…
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.