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Post by paulf on Jan 16, 2023 16:06:16 GMT -5
Reading that an LED shoplight helps seedlings grow faster and stronger (is this just merchandising?), I purchased an LED shoplight with 5000 lumens in the daylight range. My twenty-five year old double tubed fluorescent shoplights have done me well, but I am going to try the LEDs to see if peppers actually grow faster and better. I will try a flat of seeds in the LED and a flat under the old stand-by lights.
What I really need is for experienced LED growers to offer some advice, i.e. hours of lights on/off, distance from light to seedlings and anything else I may need. This dinosaur is attempting to come kicking and screaming into the 21st century whether I want to or not. If all fails, it can become another garage light to go with the ten year old light already there. Or replace a 60 watt incandescent bulb in the basement.
If this seems to work the next step is to try the lights out on tomatoes and do away with the old light bulbs that are beginning to lose power. I do replace the fluorescent bulbs every four years so I may just get lights that I will never have to change again.
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Post by octave1 on Jan 16, 2023 17:51:01 GMT -5
I replaced my old fluorescent tubes with LED last year. To my experience, only pertaing to tomatoes, it didn't make a whole lot of difference except that LED lights don't produce any warmth. I kept the lights on most of the time, and at some point they were on 24/7. I had my best results ever some years ago, still using florescent lights, when I added a small fan to the contraption and I hanged emergency blankets all around the shelf. I could tell the seedlings were oh so happy and growing super fast.
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