This is my second year of growing seriously. I’ve had a few plants in years before, but not that many as this and past year. Past year was a great success and I started my seedlings under 2 LED TL (60cm T8) tubes of 9W each (18W eqv.). After that just natural sunlight and I got pretty okay results! Harvest was good!
I’ve been in doubt for longer to get my hands on a Spider Farmer SF1000 to get full spectrum LED light. But I’m in doubt if it’s actually necessary. They do seem to be looking for light. Past weekend the weather was sunny and they didn’t look so pointy. But now they seem to lack light again.
Any thoughts?
by -L-E-N-N-Y-
3 Comments
How long until they go outside?
Personally I don’t think those LED panels are worth it. The effective area under the lights is very small so you can’t use them for many mature plants. If you are just starting seeds and not planning to flower or harvest inside then you don’t reall need a ton of light.
I use the Monios L T8 lights (4ft and 2ft depending on where) and they provide as much or more light than things like the SpiderFarmer when set up correctly. The difference is that due to the form factor you can cover a lot more seedlings albeit at a low max light level than the SpiderFarmer.
I recently bought a ViparSpectra and while it can provide double the light intensity as my Monios L, it does it in half the space for almost twice the price so it would be ~4x as expensive if I used them everywhere.
I put up some tin foil sheets behind them to reflect back light from the window (south-east). It does make a big difference and also limits the stems bending towards the window.
I would increase ventilation.