For a casual home owner wanting to grow out a flat of seedling tomatoes $300 is excessive in my opinion. I can think of a million things I’d rather drop $300 on before a high end grow light. That’s just me looking at my own budget and prioritizing spending.
I purchased a 48 inch led shop light at Sam’s club that is 5000k and 4500 lumens for $36. It’s been fantastic on the flat of tomatoes I sowed. I’m sure a $300 grow light would do much better. But I think the cheap light I bought has prepared my seedling well. If I was growing weed or had a nursery that was my business I’d make more substantial investments.
LED technology has gotten crazy cheap and efficient in the last couple years. You can get a ready to use fixture for as little as $75 shipped or $100 if you prefer more natural looking light. Keep in mind these are VERY powerful lights that can be used to grow a respectably yielding tomato / pepper plant or provide enough coverage for 4-6 sqft of growing leafy greens / cuttings / seed starting - and unlike florescent bulbs you can hang them as high as 1-2’ from the top of your plants versus a couple inches. The final nail in the coffin is that LEDs have a lifespan of 5-10 years before they lose any significant amount of brightness/efficiency which is 2-3X longer than any fluorescent bulb.
Amazes me that some people still use incandescent bulbs for their homes… I guess in the winter they can double as a room heater! In the summer they are crazy inefficient tho, especially when you consider the cost to remove the unnecessary heat from your home via AC!
This is the third year I am trying indoor strawberry with 100% LED grow light. I think I am more experienced and getting better result. Family think this is the best tasting strawberries
Plants look healthy, how long do they keep producing? Where do you get plants in the winter and what do you do with them in the summer? I have a strong aversion to purple lights so I retrofitted cobs into my previously purple strip and panel lights. Efficiency is much higher with cobs or more modern white strips, usually. What fertilizer are you using?
BTW for those interested in build your own lights, especially in shelf configurations, Id highly recommend these and they are quite cheap right now…
Thanks! It’s actually not too complicated, just a water pump, air pump, some PVC pipe and a 4x4" vinyl post as channels for the water. The hardest part was finding the correct fittings for everything and the lights since they were DIY. But these days you can buy an off the shelf light fixture that has very good performance.
I see you are/were battling fungus gnats / aphids. Any suggestions for completely annihilating them? Seems that if I miss just one or two they come right back in a few weeks.
for fungus gnats,
yellow sticky trap seems work well enough for me. It captures most of the gnats. not a big problem for me.
for spider mites,
I did battle with mites outbreak during my 1st year trial and I lost. They came and go never end. Once they started, I do not know how to get them under control! However since 2nd year, i no longer have mites issue. I changed couple my practices seems works for me:
“Before moving outdoor plants indoors you MUST give them a good soak with an insecticide” (as you stated in another thread)
before season begin, I use Clorox wipes to clean the surface of grow tent.
maintaining humidity (RH) 50%+
always wash hands with soap before work on the strawberry!!
Hadnt seen that study, but ive read a fair amount about it in the past. Strip lights are easier to build than cobs in general. You dont have to worry about heat dissipation much and they are mostly plug and play as long as you pay attention to voltages and max power. From my testing, as long as strips like I posted above are secured to some aluminum strip, they can be pushed pretty hard without any issues. If you keep them at 700ma you dont even need any heatsink materials, they can be open air… My preference is for 3000k 90cri led with peak from 630 to 650 but ive seen nice plants grown with more blue and the strips are hard to find in 90cri, most are 80cri but they seem to work well also.
When I renovated my house a couple of years ago with modern recessed lighting, Phillips was making a big push into the market with the improved more natural looking A19 LED bulbs. I replaced all of the incandescent A19’s in my house (about 30 total) with LED’s and by my napkin math the bulbs have paid for themselves at least a few times over by now, esp. when factoring in heat inefficiency. I think a lot of people miss that in calculating the energy savings
Here is an ornamental onion I started from a bulblette this fall, its over 2ft now and seems fairly happy. Its the kind that has big purple flowers at the top when grown outdoors. Probably wont flower inside…
Quick update on indoor strawberries planted in 2018. They are in full production mode now.
Probably doing something right this year. nice looking and large strawberries.
Couple problems: fruits are heavy and they need additional support. My current setup are not easy to add such support.
Incandescent are cheaper up front and in my experience they last just as long as CFL and LED. These new bulbs never last anywhere near as long as the package says they will, for me at least. We still have a few incandescent bulbs in closets that we don’t use much light in.
Of course, you can often get free LEDs from your local power company. In the northeast there’s a discount store called Ocean State Job Lot where you can get 100% back in the store’s points for LED bulbs, most of the time. It’s some brand I’d never heard of but I actually like them better than the name brand LEDs I purchased from Walmart.
By the way — thank you for all you’ve posted about grow lights. Now you have me thinking. I saw LED shop lights on 100% back in store points at Job Lot a week or two ago. They were cheapo, 100% disposable, you throw away the whole thing fixture and all when the bulb is done. I almost bought them, maybe I’ll see if they’re still on sale. Would these be OK for starting seeds or are special bulbs really a better investment?
led shop light will work for starting seeds. led bulbs actually used to be better, companies have designed newer ones to fail sooner, primarily by decreasing heatsink material which increases led temp and reduces life. they don’t want to make bulbs that last 20 to 30 years! cfl are crap imo, incand are horribly inefficient. i think they convert about 15% if electricity used into actual light. good led convert closer to 50% to light and the best are 70% efficient now. really no comparison. if anyone is interested i have a few good leds that i built I’d b willing to sell, just not using them right now. 100w and 150w units. another thing about led is the spectrum is much better than incan or cfl. higher quality light makes plants happier.
for seed starting I’d get led strips. if u are somewhat handy it’s easy to build your own light that will produce easy more light than a shop light, last longer and have a built in dimmer. shop lights can work tho if u don’t want to bother. this is a good site to educate yourself on led… http://ledgardener.com/diy-guides
However since 2nd year, i no longer have mites issue. I changed couple my practices seems works for me:
