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freemangreens

LED Lighting

17 years ago

I've been researching LED lighting online, but am a bit stumped. Has anyone used either a white or a colored LED light source to grow hydroponically?

I grow strawberries and tomatoes (year-round) and am looking for a way to "cheat" mother nature and force a longer fruiting season!

I tried researching it here on the forum, but many of the posts are 4 or 5 years old.

Comments (2)

  • 17 years ago

    Good luck with that. I tried to gather some information on it a couple of years ago to no avail. all that is out there is propaganda.
    I think you'd be better off subsidizing mother nature as opposed to replacing her. In that circumstance, MH lights would be a better option. With LED's, as I understand such things, you have to place them very close to the plants. That makes them a very tedious task if you're just going to supplement the sun.

  • 17 years ago

    I'm about to do some limited LED experimentation. Seems the best buy on LEDs that doesn't require soldering is LED xmas lights -- on Ebay, blues are about $8.50 per hundred and reds are about $10.50 (in both cases, including shipping). Probably could have gotten them cheaper in January ;). I got 1,000 blues and 100 reds, since I mainly plan to use it for spring seed starting and winter herb growing. I'm going to affix aluminum foil to an old bit of cheap wood lattice that I had in the garage (including a bit angled at the edges, forming a hood), and loosely attach the LED strands to the "hood". The whole thing will hang from the ceiling, tied with a taut-line so it can be adjusted up and down as the plants grow. Shouldn't be much work -- no soldering, no affixing each individual LED, etc. And the dangling should increase foliage penetration.

    While sites promoting LED grow lights say that a 90W UFO is equivalent to a 450W HID, what I've seen suggests it's more like a 250W HID. I'll have about 75W of LEDs, but will have spent under $100 (in comparison to ~$225 retail for a UFO). That'll save me ~175W, which on 18/6 light/dark, is 3.15kWh/day, ~95kWh/mo, ~$10.50/mo. Should be a pretty quick payback time in comparison to HID. $4.50 a month in electricity costs sounds reasonable for keeping my seedlings from getting leggy and for getting me more fresh herbs in the winter.

    If I remember to stop back here, I'll follow up on how it goes.

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