Tips For Setting Up Successful Plant Trials With LED Grow Light

How to Prepare and Set Up Grow Light Trial Environments

So, did you just recently decide you have a passion for indoor gardening? If so, you by now probably realized you haven’t a clue yet what to expect or how to get started.

Before you begin, make sure you do some research about available grow lights. Find out as much as you can about how the plants you want to grow will react to them. Then, set up grow light trial sessions.

How to Prepare Your Grow Light Trial

Draft up a plan

You have much to consider before you set up your grow light trial. For instance, are you planning to just be a residential gardener for just you and your family, or do you want to take on large-scale commercial crops?

Some crops, such as cannabis or oranges and bananas, may require more care than tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers or other vegetables. Take that into consideration before you get started too.

When drafting up your plant trials with light experiments, you’ll also have to designate specific growing areas. If you only have one room for conducting your tests, we advise separating each section with dividers. This will give you the truest reading when it’s time to evaluate the results.

If you have multiple rooms to use for your growing environment, that’s even better. It gives you the freedom to change up your variables during your grow light trials as much as you want.

Decide what results you want to achieve

Knowing what results you hope for while planning your grow light trials will increase your chance of success. For instance, you maybe want to find out what types of lights at specific temperatures and colors will produce yields in the shortest amounts of time.

You also may want to test various wattages of LED lights. This will help you determine how bright you should set your lamps, which will help prevent you from turning your leaves brown.

When preparing to grow, you also might want to know how much energy you’ll consume. Conducting plant grow light experiments will show you what you can produce using as little energy as possible. In the process, you can also see what happens if you gradually turn up the energy within a range that delivers results you’ll be satisfied with.

Prepare your trial growing environments

All scientific experiments (trials) have what’s called a “control” and a “variable” component. The control area will stay the same, and it acts as a frame of reference for comparing your variables.

For instance, you could install full-spectrum white grow LED lamps in your plant trial light control area. We recommend this because the white light includes all seven colors of the rainbow.

Your plants can receive the benefit of all light waves if you use the white LED light. It’s similar to the way a human absorbs the variety of nutrients in a multivitamin–at least a little of all of what a plant needs comes from the white (or blue) light that mimics daylight from the sun.

The white light you install in your control area could run at a wattage of your choosing. For instance, we offer DZZ series lights that run at 400, 640, 800, 1000 and 1200 watts.

Your variable growing environment settings could run on a different wattage level than your control environment. In the case of your variable settings, it’s wise to maybe try at least two or three different power supply levels to provide you with enough results variety.

Along with varying wattages, you also may want to set up a blue and a red light variable environment. That’s because you can observe how your plants will react to LED lights of these colors of the light spectrum.

In case you’re wondering, the blue light will promote strong root systems and produce stable plants once your germinated seeds begin to sprout. Some sources also say that blue light increases chlorophyll production, which activates photosynthesis.

Increased photosynthesis action can cause fuller bunches of leaves to develop on your crops. It also usually results in yielding healthier plants all around.

As for the red light, it helps most during the flowering stages. Ideally, you’ll want to have a red light variable set up by the time your plants start to show signs of budding. However, you could also set one variable growing area with the red light set up when you first plant your seeds.

If you do set up a red light variable right after you place your seeds in the dirt, make sure you have a second red variable. The second red variable of your growing experiment could take place during the budding or flowering stages.

Track your results

Track your results using as many means as possible. For instance, you can take written notes, record videos, and take pictures of your plants. This will make it easy for you to evaluate the progress your crops have made during each growing stage.

Tracking your results will also help you avoid what not to do to your plants in the future. For instance, you’ll know if your plants need less or more light. By the way, it’s even more advantageous to you if you take photos or videos and match them with your text notes.

Your text notes, by the way, should indicate measurements, such as how much taller your plants grew this week than last week. Maybe you want to count some of your control and variable plants’ leaves to see how many new ones developed. Count how many buds or flowers each one has too.

Analyze your grow light’s performance

By the time you’re ready to analyze your grow light’s performance, you should have enough records to review. Study the pictures you took, for instance. Then, line them up with the written notes you take during your inspections.

Inspect your plants

Plant inspection will work hand in hand with your analysis of your grow lights’ performances. You could have a chart that indicates any abnormalities you might notice throughout your experiment. This chart should correlate with what color lights you used at what wattage, size, temperature, brightness, etc.

Continue to maintain plants to maturity

Even though you’re only growing test crops right now, you may at least reap some benefits from them. If not for commercial use at this time, you can at least partake with your friends and family.

Celebrate a successful crop yield if you have one that you have seen through to maturity. If you haven’t, you may also want to consider other factors as you continue your experiment.

Additional Experimental Factors

Multiple Types of Growing Areas

If you only have access to one type of growing environment, this may not apply to you. However, you could perhaps set up multiple types of growing areas if you have the space.

For instance, maybe you have a sunroom on one end of your house you could convert into a greenhouse. Then, you perhaps have a shed or a garage where you can place some plants too. A basement is another area where you can conduct your growing tests.

In Season Vs. Off-Season

Growing plants indoors opens you up to a new world of opportunities. You can even try producing crops inside that would ordinarily freeze outside. Keep in mind, however, that if you choose the basement, a shade or a garage you may need to install a safe heater.

An Outdoors Control

Having one group of the same plants outside may help you determine ideal lighting conditions. In this case, your control could be your plants out in daylight with watering only when it doesn’t rain. Then, your indoor plants would be watered at similar intervals but only receive LED lights.

LED Grow Light Runtime Duration

The length of time you keep your grow lights on would make for an interesting experiment. Perhaps run them for 12 hours for one group of plants and up to 18 hours for another. This testing factor may also work well in conjunction with choosing light colors.

Windows Vs. No Windows

Having windows could allow you to run your LED grow lights at a lower energy level. It’s always an advantage to have some natural light even if you can afford the electric bill. On the other hand, you may be curious how well certain plants grow in a room with no windows.

Maintenance Routine

Perhaps how often you water your plants or whether you fertilize them or not matters. It will show you whether your plants can just live off light and water alone or if they need additional nutrients.

If you’re growing an outdoors control (or variable) experimental crop, you can also see what happens if you do pull weeds or if you don’t pull weeds.

This is Only the Beginning

You still may need to learn some of the technical aspects of using LED lights for indoor growing. The more you research before you start your grow light trials, that will increase your chance of achieving a yield as early as after your first attempt. Good luck!