Gardening at home is an enjoyable hobby and could also become an excellent source of fresh fruits, herbs, and vegetables if you have enough space and time. However, due to hectic life and compact space in the urban areas, most passionate gardeners may find it difficult. Well, not anymore with Full Spectrum LED grow Lights and grow tent kits comes with built-in timer. Indoor LED grow lighting is gaining momentum and becoming popular among home gardeners and in commercial applications.
But it seems silly to buy expensive LED grow lights if regular one just works well. However, do regular LED lights can be used to grow plants?
Even through regular LED lights may emit some of the wavelength for the growth of plants, they can’t be used as grow lights. These regular Led lights does not emit specific wavelengths that mimic the spectrum of the Sun. The combination of red & blue light requires for optimum growth of plants, vegetables, and weeds, which LED grow lights are designed to maximize.
In this article we will discuss about the reason why regular LEDs are not the best source of light for optimum growth of plants and how much you can expect plants to grow in case you use only regular LEDs. Also, we will list the advantage of LED Grow Lights in Hydroponic Farming.
Full form of LED is Light Emitting Diode. It is a piece of tiny metal that conducts electricity. When the electrical current passes through diodes, photons are released in the form of visible bright light. It is more efficient than traditional light bulbs and use up to 80% less energy with 25 times more longer life span.
Can Plants Grow with Regular LED Lights?
White or warm white light from regular LEDs used in residential and commercial lightning is the combination of red, blue, and green light. As red, blue, and green enable plants growth up to some extent, which means any standard LED can provide some of the required spectrum for basic plant growth. However, the intensity and brightness remain unknown and probability of proper ratio of colors for growth is extremely low. Therefore, standard LED Lights are not ideal for plants and vegetables because the colors are attuned to the human eye without considering the suitable ratio for them to grow. A study from renowned University found that plants absorb red spectrum of light very quickly and it is best suitable for optimum growth.
What is LED Grow Light and its benefits?
LED Grow Lights are exclusively designed to emit specific wavelength of lights that mimic the spectrum of Sun. They can rotate between different colors depending on the various growth phase of the plants. Following are the main benefits grow LED lights:
- Deliver light at targeted spectrum and wavelength: Plants should be exposed to the right wavelength for photosynthesis. Plants absorb most of the chlorophyll in red and blue colors within wavelengths in between 400-500nm and 600-700nm. Regular LED lights or other traditional incandescent bulbs unable to produce targeted wavelength. But LED grow lights can produce it, which results in high yield & quicker harvest cycle.
- Energy Saving: LED grow lights produce high intensity but consume less power. They also come with dimming feature that allows you to save more energy, which result in growing your plants fast but at low cost.
- Long Life Span: Experts says that LED Lights can last for up to thousands of hours without maintenance. Also, the maintenance cost is very less as compared to other source of lights.
- Multiple Designs: It comes in different designs such as inter-lightning design, ceiling, vertical system with multi-layer and many others you can find in our collections.
Conclusion
Some plants may survive with regular LED but with very low yield results. On the other hand, LED grow light is great way to enhance the growth of plant with specific wavelengths. We recommend you not to try and grow plants that requires plenty of sunshine under a regular LED light, as they will eventually die in this adverse environment.