Grow Light Choices

Grow Lights are available for commercial and home gardening applications.

Choosing a lighting system depends on what type of plants you intend to grow and if you will grow them indoors to maturity. Grow lights are available as a fluorescent, compact fluorescent, Metal Halide and HPS system. Consider the following when you select your grow light.

Commercial grow lights are designed for greenhouse applications

Remote grow lights: This the most popular system, the ballast is in an separate enclosure and connects to a choice of remote reflectors with a 15 foot lamp cord. Systems run cooler when the ballast and reflector are separate.
Convertible Remote Grow Lights: Growing in popularity because these remote grow lights allow the grower to switch between HPS or metal halide lamps for each growing stage with a simple flip of the switch and lamp change. Eliminates the need for conversion lamps.
Enclosed grow lights: compact lights where the ballast and reflector are in the same housing. Great for growing areas up to 5ft x 5ft.
A glass lens option is highly recommended and is necessary for UL listing for metal halide systems. Also, helps keep the bulb clean and the reflector cooler.

Fluorescent lighting systems:

T12 Fluorescent lighting is used primarily to start seedlings, for low light intensity plants like orchids, violets and houseplants.
New T5 high output fluorescent grow lights are now available that produce high lumen output similar to 400 watt metal halide and HPS systems and may be used to grow various plants to maturity.
New T8 high output 6-lamp flourescent grow lights are less expensive than T5 grow lights, operate cooler, save energy and replacement lamps are 50% less.

Spectral Output:

Metal Halide lighting produces white/blue/violet spectral energy for leafy, bushy vegetative growth. The growing combination is metal halide during the vegetative growth stage and HPS during the flowering and fruiting stages. Metal halide, especially full spectrum 6500 Kelvin metal halide, may be used during all growing stages.
High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lighting produces red/orange spectral energy that promotes flowering and fruiting and is best usde during that growing stage. Using HPS as a primary light source during the vegetative growth stages will result in stringy plants and a reduction in internodals. HPS is also highly recommended for use in greenhouses as supplemental lighting.
Both Metal Halide and HPS produce high intensity light which is one of the key factors in plant growth. Lumens is a measurement of the amount of light that a specific bulb produces.
Photoperiod is another key factor and refers to the number of hours the lights are on or off. 18 hours on and 6 hours off during the intial vegetative growth stages increases vegetative growth. The normal ratio for flowering and fruiting would be 12 hours on and 12 hours off.

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