Since their introduction as a practical electronic component in 1962, LEDs (light-emitting diodes) have found their way into millions of devices. And to say that LEDs have made their mark on the indoor growing industry is an understatement. Because LEDs differ so greatly from our current HID/MH horticultural lighting technologies, many growers don’t know exactly how to make LEDs work for them.

Q:

I have been growing for a while and have started to research ways to improve my garden. I know there are lots of different light sources to choose from, but what I want to know more about is spectrum. It seems that even if I want to stick with HID or whether I switch to LED or even Plasma, I have some choices to make regarding spectrum. I love the way my plants look and grow in veg under my high output fluorescent lighting which is full spectrum. What about full spectrum lighting for the bloom phase? Everyone says you’ve got to use HPS (orange light) or don’t expect much. What do you think?

Last week we ran down some good options for lighting your grow room. Beginners often underestimate how important good grow bulbs are to the health and size of your yield, so we’re laying it all out here in Hydro 101. Last week we talked about T5 and metal halide bulbs. This week, we’re exploring more options.

New growers often underestimate how important certain elements of their grow room are. They assume that with the right seeds or clones and the right nutrients that their plants will grow into moneymakers. How wrong they are. We’ve worked to dispel some of those misunderstandings here in Hydro 101, and today we’re going to continue that trend by talking about the importance of finding the right grow bulbs to light your crop all the way to harvest time.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in Hydro 101 to this point, and if you’ve been following along, you will be ready to take some serious steps in getting your first grow up and running. We’ve spoken a lot about outdoor growing lately, but this week, we’re turning our attention back to the indoor grow room.

Summer is sizzling, and you know what that means for you as a hydroponics grower: too much heat!

Your hydroponics plants want ambient air temperatures around 74F. Their roots best intake water and nutrients if the root zone is 68F. But in a closed grow room indoors, with hydroponics lighting and other hydroponics gear generating heat, you have an obvious problem: temperatures are going up, and it costs money to keep them down.

I love growing outdoors but I live in a place where temperatures and humidity from May through October are too extreme for high-value hydroponics plants. And yeah, I was one of those growers who doubted that conditions could get too hot for my plants…until I saw twisted, brown leaves and zero growth from “tropical” strains growing outdoors in July. Later on, these same plants produced light, airy buds, and not much weight, because of excess heat.

Q:

I hear LOTS of different things about sources of grow lighting that are alternatives to my energy hungry and heat blasting HPS (high pressure lighting) set-ups. In some growing threads, I see beautiful results with LEDs (light emitting diode) and even more recently the new generation LEPs (light emitting plasma). Other times, I see terrible results. The results are just as wide reaching when I talk with different growers. Most noticeably, the widest differences in the results seem to be with the LED grow lights - from “total crap” to “da bomb!”

One of the biggest costs of your hydroponics indoor garden is electricity, air conditioning and hydroponics lighting equipment. Now here comes some great ways to get more hydroponics light with lower electricity costs.

Most of us hydroponics growers have one major goal: increase maximum yield and efficiency so we see the largest and most valuable hydroponics harvests possible. Here are some surefire ways to make your bigger yields dreams come true…

When you have limited space or budget but big dreams about using hydroponics to grow massive harvests, you can enjoy the micro-garden approach that makes good hydroponics things happen in small spaces.

Hydroponics lighting comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s among the most important hydroponics gear you use as an indoor hydroponics grower. HID, HPS, MH, LED, T-5, plasma lighting- hydroponics lights choices can seem like rocket science. Let’s take a few moments to shed some light on hydroponics lighting…

Hydroponics lighting systems have long relied on HPS, MH and LED lighting, with LED being the newcomer hydroponics lighting technology. HPS and MH lighting are generically grouped as HID (high intensity discharge), and they definitely put out high intensity light, along with brutal amounts of heat. Hydroponics LED lighting is controversial, with many growers complaining that LED still doesn’t generate enough light intensity. Now there’s a new hydroponics lighting technology that takes hydroponics lighting systems beyond MH, HPS and LED. It’s called plasma lighting...

When you consider what your indoor hydroponics urban garden plants must have in order to give you maximum yield, one of the first things that comes to mind is hydroponics grow lights.

Your hydroponics plants love light, but in most grow rooms, light is provided via a top-down method that sends a lot of light to the top of your plants with not much hitting underneath and inside the canopy where most of your flowers and leaves are.