An indoor plant or garden can bring a real breath of fresh air to a room's decor, introducing a little bit of nature into your own living space. You can even grow some vegetables indoors, opening up fresh produce even to those stuck in a small city apartment. Caring for those indoor plants, however, has always been a challenge: even in well-lit rooms, many plants are not able to receive sufficient light to grow as fully as they would otherwise. To alleviate this, most indoor growers purchase a grow light. Traditionally grow lights have been incandescent or fluorescent lamps, but in recent years, great strides have been made in LED (light-emitting diode) lamps. Even for seasoned indoor growers, the benefits and restrictions of using Led growing light are not always clear - not the least because you must use them somewhat differently than a standard grow light. While incandescent and fluorescent lamps technically use different methods of producing light, they share one fundamental characteristic: the light produced by the lamp is essentially a by-product of a chemical reaction. In an incandescent bulb, this reaction is caused by electricity running through a filament; in a fluorescent tube, a gas is used instead. Either way, there are side effects to relying on this chemistry for your light. First, since the light is a "waste product" of the reaction, much more energy has to be consumed by the lamp to generate that light. This contrasts with LEDs, which generate light directly as a result of an electrical current passing through them. Energy costs over time tend to be dramatically lower with continued usage of LED grow lights. Second, the chemical reaction that provides light in the older bulbs also generates a significant amount of heat, as anyone who touched a light bulb as a child is painfully aware. With the amount of light necessary to grow indoors, and the ideal proximity of that light to the plants, managing temperatures so as not to scorch the growing plants can be difficult. LEDs generate almost no heat at all, making overall temperature management much simpler.
Using LED Grow Lights to Grow Plants Indoors
An indoor plant or garden can bring a real breath of fresh air to a room's decor, introducing a little bit of nature into your own living space. You can even grow some vegetables indoors, opening up fresh produce even to those stuck in a small city apartment. Caring for those indoor plants, however, has always been a challenge: even in well-lit rooms, many plants are not able to receive sufficient light to grow as fully as they would otherwise. To alleviate this, most indoor growers purchase a grow light. Traditionally grow lights have been incandescent or fluorescent lamps, but in recent years, great strides have been made in LED (light-emitting diode) lamps. Even for seasoned indoor growers, the benefits and restrictions of using Led growing light are not always clear - not the least because you must use them somewhat differently than a standard grow light. While incandescent and fluorescent lamps technically use different methods of producing light, they share one fundamental characteristic: the light produced by the lamp is essentially a by-product of a chemical reaction. In an incandescent bulb, this reaction is caused by electricity running through a filament; in a fluorescent tube, a gas is used instead. Either way, there are side effects to relying on this chemistry for your light. First, since the light is a "waste product" of the reaction, much more energy has to be consumed by the lamp to generate that light. This contrasts with LEDs, which generate light directly as a result of an electrical current passing through them. Energy costs over time tend to be dramatically lower with continued usage of LED grow lights. Second, the chemical reaction that provides light in the older bulbs also generates a significant amount of heat, as anyone who touched a light bulb as a child is painfully aware. With the amount of light necessary to grow indoors, and the ideal proximity of that light to the plants, managing temperatures so as not to scorch the growing plants can be difficult. LEDs generate almost no heat at all, making overall temperature management much simpler.