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The Best Grow Lights for Cannabis
Grow lights act like an artificial sun using varying spectrums or UV rays for best results.
Lights are vital because they affect your plants’ growth cycles, photosynthesis, health, and bud development. Lighting is marijuana plants’ food. Make a plan for your grow room’s water, light, and airflow systems before you start building. This article will focus on lighting.
Which Lights Grow Weed Best?
We have knowledge about these 3 types of lights for growing cannabis:
- LED lights
- Metal Halide
- HPS grow lights
While each one of these choices available has benefits and drawbacks, as well as optimal stages of growth and operation sizes, this page will focus on the types lights trending in many grow setups today and why.
1. LED Grow Lights
LED Grow Lights are incredibly remarkable considering the costs. Although a good LED light for growing cannabis might be initially a shock to the wallet for some good systems, it pays off with reduced electricity bills. LED Growing lights have transformed the world in terms of affordability, versatility and power.
LED Grow lights can change colours to suit the different colour spectrum cannabis needs during its varying phases when growing.
You can pick up an LED Grow Light for $150 – $3000. The more you pay, the better the light will be.
2. Metal Halide
Metal halide lamps are high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps. HID lamps include mercury vapour lamps.
A MH lamp produces light whenever an electrical arc passes through a gaseous mixture. This mixture of gases usually includes xenon, mercury or argon, and a range of different of metal halides. Metal halides are created by combining halogen and metal. Metals combined with bromine and iodine are used in metal halide lamps. The kinds of metal halides being used influences the light’s colour temperature.
The MH lamp has two main parts: the external bulb and the internal arc tube. The internal arc tube is the key. Once switched off, the metal halides and mercury condense within the arc tube. The arc tube has two electrodes on either end. When the MH lamp is powered, a current of electricity flows from one electrode to the next. This causes the mercury to vaporise and assist the electrical current grow. As the metal halides heat up, they turn into gas. As the metal halide atoms are repelled from the arc, white light is produced.
3 – HPS (High Pressure Sodium)
The high pressure sodium (HPS) light for gardening indoors was invented by Andrei Famintsyn in 1868. Growing plants in the reproductive and vegetative stages does wonders with this grow light. High-pressure sodium bulbs emit light in the yellow-red range which is great for the vegetative phase and even better for flowering.
Unlike metal halide lights, HPS lights emit less CO2. They last longer as well. Most HPS light systems last 12,000 to 24,000 hours.
A 400W bulb can certainly handle a 15 square foot garden, whereas a 1000W bulb could indeed cover a 7×7 foot growing area.
Many cannabis growers used HPS bulbs for a long time. Nevertheless, newer technologies like LEDs and CMH are putting the squeeze on HPS manufacturers. To stay competitive, HPS producers presently provide dual lighting technology, which is more powerful and lasts longer.
Conversion HPS bulbs can be used in metal halide ballasts, and vice versa.