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There are a wide variety of indoor grow lights available for everyone from the professional grower to the amateur gardener. The types of systems vary widely in cost, value, and effectiveness. It is also important to take into account the types of plants you wish to grow indoors when selecting a grow light system. If you take the time to do your research, you will end up with the system that best suits your gardening needs, your available space, and your wallet.
First, you’ll need to determine what light levels and types of light are needed for the particular plants you want to grow indoors. For example, most vegetable crops require full sun or the equivalent of 8-12 hours of bright light per day. One the other hand, ferns and many other decorative plants need filtered or low light for that same 8-12 hours per day. Light on the blue end of the color spectrum encourages bushy green plant growth, while the red end of the spectrum is best for flowering plants. Don’t forget that all plants need hours of darkness also to facilitate seeding and flowering.
Of all the indoor grow lights available, the cheapest, but least productive, is the incandescent grow light system. The bulbs burn very hot, so you cannot place them too close to your plants. Therefore you lose a lot of the light output as it travels the distance between the fixture and the plant growth. A better option for the amateur gardener is the fluorescent grow light system. The fixtures are still reasonably inexpensive and the bulbs emit very little heat, allowing you to place the fixtures within inches of your plants. This not only maximizes your available space, but allows the plants to catch nearly all the light being emitted.
If you have a large indoor gardening operation, you would be better served to invest in a more, expensive, but more productive system. High Intensity Discharge (HID) indoor grow lights are one of the most efficient systems available. These fixtures emit light that does the best job of mimicking natural sunlight. Furthermore, the chemical composition of the HID bulbs can be varied to produce light from different parts of the color spectrum. This allows you to customize your HID indoor grow lights to suit the type of crop you are growing. In contrast, high pressure sodium (HPS) lights do not mimic natural sunlight. The light they produce is only at the orange-red end of the color spectrum. However, HPS indoor grow lights are very good at promoting flowering and seeding and are, therefore, still widely used in the commercial growers market. HPS lights will generally produce larger harvests of fruit and vegetable crops. Another drawback to the HPS system is that plants generally take on a “leggy” and washed out appearance. Therefore, the HPS system is better for growing crop plants as opposed to decorative plants.
In summary, the amateur gardener will get the biggest bang for his buck by purchasing fluorescent indoor grow lights. Fluorescents provide the best space utilization and effectiveness for a small monetary investment. For the large scale grower, HID grow lights perform better than HPS systems. The HID indoor grow lights provide a full color spectrum of light output, while HPS only produces light from the red end of the spectrum. Although both systems produce a large amount of light, the HID system better duplicates natural sunlight and thus provides for a better looking harvest.
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Author Bio Box: Patricia Wainwright
Get all the facts about gardening equipment and gardening articles at GreenThumbArticles.com!
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