Posts Tagged ‘HPS’
Choosing Grow Lights for Hydroponics Gardening – Grow lights Types
Plants use light to convert it into energy during the process, called photosynthesis. Growth of the plant is directly dependant on the amount of light received. By the way, the amount and type of light depend on the particular plant and its stage of development. So, a good grow lamp is the one, which is chosen in accordance with the light requirements of the particular plant.
Light is essential for health of your indoor plants, but choosing a proper grow light may be challenging and always requires thorough considerations. Grow light fluorescent offers the benefits of high effectiveness, no heat generation and full spectrum of light. For comparison, incandescent bulbs also produce a lot of light, but at the same time they generate a lot of heat, which is not always beneficial for indoor plants.
Grow Lights in hydroponics gardening – High Pressure Sodium (HPS) grow light
Along with water, hydroponics plant nutrients, CO2 and oxygen, grow lightsis the key basic component, required by plants to live. Providing additional light is necessary for indoor gardening. Furthermore, light should resemble the sunlight as much as possible. The major concern with other types of lights is that they do not produce light in the appropriate spectrum, required by plants.
Being the most efficient bulbs, HPS bulbs are commonly used by gardeners. Producing light in red and yellow spectrum, light generated by high pressure sodium lamps resembles the natural sunlight during autumn. Due to this peculiarity, HPS light is the best for promoting plants blooming. However, some plants may react negatively to this type of light, growing with oblong stem, etc. To address that issue, new HPS bulbs with color correction have been developed. For example, Son Argo feature properly balanced light spectrum, which suits perfectly for the needs of indoor gardening.
Choosing Grow Lights for Hydroponics Gardening – Intro
One can enjoy hydroponics gardening any season of the year, but it is especially rewarding during the cold and dark winter days. Being a type of indoor gardening, this system implies growing of plants in a special growing medium, supplied with nutrient solution, instead of soil. Similarly to other indoor gardening methods, with hydroponics gardening it is necessary to use grow lights, which allow plants to grow, make food and reproduce themselves through flowers or fruits. For this purpose HID lights are commonly used. There are several types of HID or high-intensity discharge lights: for example, metal halide grow lights and HPS grow lights. Every HID light requires digital ballast, which is necessary in order to control electrical current within the lamp, and thus provide its seamless functioning. Supplying light with a reflector is highly recommended as well, since it allows pointing the light in proper direction and increasing the light, produced by the bulb itself. Other type of grow lights are cost-effective and lightweight LED lights, where light-emitting diodes are used to produce light in colors beneficial for keeping up plant growth. The use of any of these lamps is highly effective for hydroponics growing.
Grow Lights in hydroponics gardening
Along with water, hydroponics plant nutrients, Co2 and oxygen, grow lights is the key basic component, required by plants to live. Providing additional light is necessary for indoor gardening. Furthermore, light should resemble the sunlight as much as possible. In order to achieve that goal several types of lights are used: incandescent, fluorescent, high intensity discharge or HID lamps and sulfur lights. While there are many other types of lighting, only the mentioned above are recommended for indoor gardening. The major concern with other types of lights is that they do not produce light in the appropriate spectrum, required by plants.
Though typical widely used incandescent lamps fit any ordinary light socket, this type of lighting is considered to be the least effective in lighting your garden in comparison with other types of lighting. Incandescent lights produce light in the red spectrum; that is why such lamps are commonly covered with a blue coating in order to increase the amount of blue spectrum in the produced light. In general, incandescent lights are considered to be poor options for indoor gardening needs.
Basic Indoor hydroponics Gardening Guide – Indoor Grow Lights Fluorescent tubes, Hps and MH
Fluorescent Grow Light
Inexpensive and readily available in hardware stores and be utilized with regular light sockets. Producing less heat or none at all compared to full-size fluorescent grow lights.
Not just because of its small size and low heat output; compact fluorescent lights also produce the widest range of color spectrums to any type of lighting. It is ideal for shelf gardening due to their low heat output making the use of multiple shelves on top of each other possible. Compact fluorescent lights can be used with seedlings and small plants in a well designed hydroponic system indoor garden.
Common Problems with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs
Problems with compact fluorescent light bulbs like inefficiency and poor light penetration are common. Several compact fluorescent bulbs maybe used and consume energy as that of one HPS bulb, but do not produce the same useable light for the hydroponic indoor garden.