I am new to the grow scene but after much research I am looking at going for the LED setup with possible one CFL. SOme setups have 1 white LED in the mix with a wide angle to cover the plants. This is only doing like 4 plants so obviously if you have like 20 plants you will need more than 1 white LED. Also most setups say you need 6:1 Red/Blue for the lights.
Where I will be growing it will be already be incredible hot and the AC will be kicking so I do not want to add anymore heat as well as the electrical issue. The penalties are way to severe if busted.
LED are comparable cheaper and can get the job done. You will just have stretched out plants. Although I am sure you can correct this by lowering the lights to the plants. Correct me if I am wrong but the plants stretch because they want more light so just put them closer to limit the upward growth.
Please correct me if I am wrong I am still a total noobie!!!
Yeah, that pretty much sums up the reason for stretching. In say a 4'x2' area, you would want 3 CFLs and then 3 or so supplementary LEDs, but it also depends on the wattage of the LEDs in use. A major concern is coverage here, i'm guessing this is going to be a closet grow?? If so, you want to have the light spread out accordingly. Anyways, white LEDs aren't what we know to be white light. They come in one of two variations. The first being a blue LED with a phosphorus coating that diffuses the blue light and tricks our eyes into seeing white light, basically. Thats why when looking at something under a white LED they always look a little funny, BUT, there is hope.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/nanocrystal-coating-led-lightbulbs.php The other way of creating White light from an LED is the straight forward approach, just combine red/green/blue LEDs to make white light. SO, using a white LED defeats the purpose of using LEDs, you loose a lot of the efficiency your trying to gain. On light color and plant absorbency. There is a crap ton of debate out there, but generally a plant will adapt to whatever light wavelength its given, but obviously it will be more productive with specific colors. Its considered that blue light is used more during vegetative growth, and red is used during flowering. So, you really only need blue LEDs for the first stages of growth, but a plant will still use and absorb the blue light in flowering stages. LED wattage, really, people short out here, the bottom line is were trying to grow a plant, if there isn't enough energy available, then the plant isn't going to grow to its full potential. So, even though there are great 10w bulbs out there, they just aren't enough to grow plant, especially not one as large as what we are trying to grow. There is a formula for area and light.... but i can't remember it off the top of my head.... BUT, for 4 plants, in say a 4'x2' area, maybe even 5 and a little larger area you should be able to get away with 3 CFLs, i would give a wattage, but really you want 1,500 lumens per CFL or above... i guess maybe a little less would work though. As far as LEDs, measurement in Lumens, or Candelas or whatever isn't really appropriate, because they are all a measurement of how bright they appear to us, NOT plants, and red/blue light doesn't show up that well to us. I'm still experimenting with smaller LEDs and searching for information, people have gotten away with 3-4 15w LED bulbs.... but i'm not sure how i fell about that. There was a HUGE plague of the 12w "china boxes" on ebay a little while ago, well i guess some one finally figured out they were worthless and they were replaced by 50w boxes, which actually work, and i'd say 2 of those would work. ooo, just found a combo grow
http://hydrobuds.net/LEDCFLVEG.html... isn't the one i wanted, there is grow out there, i want to say he had 4 24w??CFLs and 3or 4 reds from
http://www.ledgrowlights.com/products.htm ??? pretty sure. OH YEAH, final thing, light intensity, it doesn't have so much to do with absorbency as some have stated "its only absorbing 1w of light from 50 places vs 100w from a single" ??? that doesn't even make sense. Anyways, what it does have a lot to do with is light penetration and for how far it will keeps in energy. obviously a HID light will grow a taller plant, via light being able to penetrate the canopy of the MJ plants, in time this well be overcome by higher power LEDs (already 5w and 10w emitters would do the trick.. heck, 1wers already do) Anyways, with lower power LEDs and CFLs you shouldn't expect to grow a plant any higher than 3ft, and your still going to be doing some kind of half way SOG deal, ie, flowering your plants earlier than normal.
I will keep a look out.
