With the legalization of marijuana, individuals and businesses started cultivating marijuana independently. However, the challenge of producing high-quality marijuana remains. Let's delve into the impact of LED grow lights on marijuana cultivation.
Lighting plays a crucial role in cannabis growth, with natural sunlight being the ideal source. Sunlight offers the perfect combination of UV rays that plants thrive on, and proximity to the equator enhances these benefits.
Cannabis requires substantial light to develop premium plants and flowers. Typically, a cannabis plant needs twelve hours of darkness daily to flower. Generally, the more light the plants receive, the healthier and more robust they become, resulting in greater yields.
The use of grow lamps
Despite the advantages of outdoor cultivation, some growers prefer using grow lamps because they offer better control over the plants and the growing season.
Simply pointing a bulb at your plant is insufficient for proper growth. To replace sunlight, you need lamps specifically designed for growing cannabis.
The growth of a cannabis plant is significantly influenced by the type and use of grow lamps. The most effective lamp types include metal halide (MH) lamps, high-pressure sodium (HPS) vapor lamps, and specialized LED grow lamps.
Fluorescent lamps are also beneficial as they emit optimal blue light for leaf growth. MH lamps are ideal during the vegetative phase, while HPS lamps provide the best light for the flowering phase.
Distance between the grow lamps
The distance between the lamps and your plants is crucial for optimal growth. If the lamps are too far away, your cannabis won't receive sufficient light; if they are too close, you risk burning your valuable plants.
In the nursery stage, maintaining the correct distance between the lights and the plants is essential. One of the most common mistakes growers make is placing the lights too far from the plants. This leads to long, slender plants with weak stems that cannot support their weight and may droop.
These elongated stems occur because the seedlings stretch towards the light in an attempt to receive more illumination.
The actual optimal distance of your lamps depends on the type of light used and your grow room. Here are some basic guidelines:
Light intensity
Plants that get more light tend to grow better and get higher yields - that's a fact. However, it is also easy to over-saturate your plants with light and cause them to burn easily. Or adjust the lamps too weakly so that your plants do not receive enough light and "stretch" or have slowed growth.
The light intensity or brightness can be measured in lumens (lm) as well as in lux:
Lumen - measures the luminous flux emitted by a source. The higher the lumen, the brighter the light source.
Lux - measures the light intensity that falls on a surface. Since plants only absorb the light that falls on their surface, light guides are usually measured with lux in grow guides.
Similar to the removal of the lamps, the optimal light intensity also depends on the type of light you want to use in the grow room. Here are some basic guidelines:
The color of LED grow light
Many people don't know that the color of light can affect the growth of your plants. Visible light actually behaves like a wave and shows different properties depending on the length of its waves. For example, a light with a wavelength of 400 nm is recognized by the human eye as a purple color.
Certain types of grow lamps show a certain light color. For example, MH (metal halides) produces a predominantly blue colored light, while LED lamps can isolate and emit a multitude of colors.
For optimal plant growth, blue light is most beneficial during the seedling and vegetative stages as it promotes the formation of chlorophyll, a chemical essential for faster and stronger plant growth. Metal halide (MH) lamps are often used during this stage because the blue light they emit mimics the high sun of summer months.
Conversely, high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps are ideal for the flowering stage. They mimic the light conditions of late summer, when the sun's rays pass through more of the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in a red spectrum that is perfect for encouraging the flowering of cannabis plants.
Lighting cycles
Like humans, plants need their sleep and usually cannot be lit by light 24 hours a day. In addition, cannabis lighting can be expensive when it comes to power consumption. This is another reason why it is a good idea to have a lighting cycle for your grow lights.
You cannot keep cannabis plants under constant light as the plants will not flower without darkness. The only time the plants can be exposed to light for 24 hours is when they are in the seedling phase as they are still babies and need a lot of light to grow.
In the dark, plants produce the hormones necessary for flowering. If the darkness is not disturbed by light, they will continue to bloom and growth will be reduced to a minimum. You need a good combination of the two to get a good harvest of marijuana.
For the duration of the vegetative phase, your plants need 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness. Once you're ready to flower your plants, you can trigger their flowering phase by setting the lighting cycle to 12 hours of light and 12 hours of total darkness.
Note: The above is reprinted from VANQ