The Steps To Yields Using LED Grow Light: Growing Healthy Plants Indoor
Nowadays, more people are growing plants indoors using LED grow lights, and with good reason! With the vagaries of weather, and other concerns, farming outdoors can often be a hit-or-miss proposition. For higher yields and more quality plants, indoor gardening using LED grow lights just makes sense, especially if your crop is to sustain you, or if you’re running a commercial business.
When it comes to how to grow healthy plants indoors, one of the most important factors is lighting. Plants need light to grow, flower, and photosynthesize. Without the proper light, you could have sickly—or worse, dead—plants, and you will have wasted your investment. That’s why it is so important to understand what grow lights are right for your plants. Not only will your plants thrive under the right lighting, but they will also have higher yields, and even better taste.
In this post, we offer a step-by-step guide in using LED lights effectively and how to determine the highest yielding LED grow lights. The following are the steps grow plants indoor.
The Steps Grow Plant:
- Understand how LED grow lights are used.
- Select the right LED grow light.
- Set up your indoor garden.
- Prepare your plants for indoor growth.
- Maintain your LED lights.
- Monitor plant growth and address problems.
Understanding LED Grow Lights
The first step is to understand what an LED grow light is and how it differs from a “regular” LED light. LED lights are now used in many applications due to their longer life, lower energy consumption, and lower heat emissions than conventional incandescent and fluorescent lights. All three benefits are important when setting up an indoor garden. After all, whether you’re growing your own crops to feed yourself, or growing crops to sell, it’s important that your indoor garden be as cost-effective and safe as possible. LED grow light outperform older, more dangerous types of grow lights in their safety, cost-effectiveness, and versatility.
LED grow lights differ from the LED lights you might find in a grocery or hardware store by emitting more light in certain spectra that plants require to grow. The closer the light is to natural sunlight, the healthier the plant. Conventional LED lighting is too weak and doesn’t provide enough of the light spectra necessary for plants to grow. That’s why you need to use the highest yielding LED grow light available.
Selecting the Right LED Grow Light
So, what is the highest yielding grow light? Well, like anything, it depends. What plant species are you growing? Each plant species will have its own requirements for light, including what light spectrum, how much light, and how intense the light is.
The following requirements must be taken into account when buying an LED grow light for your garden:
- Different plants require different light spectra to grow best, so it is important to understand what spectrum of light your plants prefer. Many prefer light toward the infrared spectrum, but some benefit with UV light.
- What is that plant’s photoperiod? The photoperiod is the time it receives sunlight versus darkness. Some plants naturally get more sun during their growing season, but some may require equal amounts at certain times. Plants, especially cannabis, need different a photoperiod for their vegetative stage versus their flowering stage.
- What light intensity does the plant grow best in? Full sunlight or shade? The intensity is measured in mol/m2/s, and may vary, again, due to the growing season.
These three factors may seem complex, but they will help you mimic the ideal conditions for growing.
Other factors you must consider when choosing an LED grow light includes wattage, coverage area, and energy efficiency.
- Wattage will affect the overall intensity, coverage area, and energy efficiency. It is the amount of power, or in many LED lights, the comparable power, of light the bulb puts out.
- The coverage area is the amount of light that covers your plants. If you have a medium to large garden, to have consistent light throughout your garden, you will have to have many lights to ensure all the plants are receiving enough light at the right intensity.
- Energy efficiency is how much electricity you’re actually using. Generally the lower the wattage, the lower the cost, but this is a careful balancing act. Some lights use more electricity than others.
Setting Up the Indoor Garden
When starting out, many people opt for grow tents. These tents can go into any room in your home where they will fit, even a closet. Some are small—just 2 foot by 2 foot. Others can be as big as 6 foot by 6 foot. Some people choose a spare bedroom or garage to grow their plants. Regardless, grow tents give your plants a climate-controlled environment that will help healthy plants to grow indoors.
When choosing the location of your indoor garden, be sure to factor in the overall environment. All plants need ventilation; otherwise, the air will get overheated and could sicken, or even kill, your plants. The temperature needs to be regulated for maximum growth. And you will have to watch the humidity closely. When growing more tropical plants, you must pay attention to the humidity the plant does best in.
Where you hang your LED grow lights is crucial to your plants. If you hang them too low, you’ll risk burning them or even starting a fire. Too high, and your plants won’t get the intensity needed to grow. If you’re using a grow tent, you’re likely to see hooks for hanging lights, but be aware that the optimal distance between the grow light and the top of the plant is 12 inches or a foot.
Because plants naturally grow in optimal conditions—and let’s face it, that’s what you want—you’ll need to adjust the height of the lamps daily, if not more often.
Create a lighting schedule for your plants. The schedule will be different for vegetative stages versus flowering stages. Pay close attention to the different photoperiods recommended for your specific plants and follow them to ensure maximum yield.
Preparing the Plants for Indoor Growth
Whether you choose to grow from seed or buy seedlings, choose good soil with nutrients that has about 25 percent perlite and add a couple of tablespoons of dolomite lime per gallon of soil. If the soil has nutrients added, chances are it will support your plants through the vegetative stage. When your plants begin to flower, you’ll want to add more nutrients to maintain optimal growth.
At the same time, you’re going to need to account for healthy root systems. Plants require, on average, a gallon of soil per 12 inches in height. Don’t skimp on this because if your plants’ root systems aren’t healthy, you won’t maximize the yield.
So, should you start from seeds or plan on seedlings? This is a matter of preference and your needs as a farmer. The plus side to starting from healthy seedlings is that you’ve already got plants that are growing, and you don’t have to waste time on gestation. But if you are looking at growing heirloom varieties or plants that are difficult to obtain from commercial greenhouses, you may have no choice but to start from seed.
Proper Maintenance of LED Grow Lights
With proper maintenance, your LED grow lights will last a long time. If you inspect, clean, and dust your LED grow lights regularly, they should continue to work well for many growing seasons. Always check for signs of damage, and general wear and tear. Replace damaged components when you find them.
Always check the distance between your plants and the lights, and adjust the lights as necessary.
Monitoring Plant Health and Growth
Your LED grow lights yield depends largely on you monitoring your plants’ health and growth. Too much or not enough water, incorrect humidity, incorrect photoperiod, too much light intensity (or not enough), and lack of nutrients are ways that can severely stunt your plants’ growth.
While, in most cases, your plants will not be exposed to diseases, if you purchase plants from places that have diseased plants, you can ruin not only the crops you have, but other crops you might be growing now or in the future. Pests are less prevalent in indoor gardens, but insects and rodents do have a habit of finding their way inside, especially if you have your garden in a garage.
Rodents can be handled with traps; insects may need pesticide to control them. Using an organic pesticide will not only kill the insects but will also reduce the toxin in your harvest.
Regardless of the problem, be sure to identify the cause and address the problem quickly to ensure the best LED grow light yield. Inspecting your crop daily will ensure you stay on top of any problems that might arise.
In order to have a successful indoor garden, you need to continue to plan, maintain, and monitor your garden throughout every stage. With LED grow lights, you can maximize yields, while doing so both efficiently and cost-effectively. Using LED grow lights allows you to grow whatever plant you want, regardless of the temperature or season. Start your indoor garden today.
