Posted on 09/03/2017 11:29:17 PM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
As a self-confessed science geek I am fascinated by technology. Yet in the world of gardening this is often synonymous with the gimmicky (fiberglass meerkat solar light, anyone?) or the hugely complex and costly – think hydroponic growers that require a degree in electrical engineering to install. So it was with trepidation that I started experimenting with LED grow lights last winter in my tiny flat.
Nine months down the line I am a total convert, eulogizing about them to all my gardening mates. They are something I feel could be a gamechanger to many modern gardeners, if we could only get over our preconceptions. This is why…
Once upon a time grow lamps were massive, ungainly things – fluorescent tubes more than a meter long that required complex and hideous systems of stands, cables and reflectors. They were real power guzzlers, too, so not exactly great for the planet, or your wallet – which would already have taken a pretty eye-watering hit from the price of all the kit. They even kicked out quite a bit of heat, which apart from raising safety issues, could also damage the very plants you were trying to grow.
However, recent breakthroughs in LED technology have created a new generation of effective, cool-running grow lights that cost a fraction of the old-school behemoths both to buy and to run, consuming (according to some manufacturers) 90% less energy. Crucially, they have shrunk down enough to be easily incorporated into average living room decor, some seamlessly integrated into planter-cum-lamp designs.
Others are light and thin enough to be fixed pretty much invisibly into standard flat-pack shelves, turning existing pieces of furniture in my house into instant growing units. These LED lights are becoming increasingly widely available online and even at a certain Scandinavian home store.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Those I use have a great flavor anyway , no matter what they’re called ,,, I have one of my on crosses thats a Bell pepper and a Jalapeno , sweeter flavor when green , gets hotter as it turn red
I like my stomach and intestines too much to put that stuff in any quantity,in me.
I grow bell peppers.
I used to order up calamari fra diavolo at the local Italian restaurant. But sometimes it was just too painful. After that I asked for mild sauce and a bottle of hot sauce to douse it to taste.
There are delicately flavored foods that can never be tasted after you destroy your taste buds with capsaicin.
Your LED grow lights just died?
Since this has morphed into a pepper thread, I have a suggestion. I grow Habenero peppers and I use them for two things. I chop them up and put them in sweet cornbread, where they taste great, and I use them in beer, where they also taste great. Take a Habenero and cut it in two from the North to South Pole. Then stuff one of the halves into a bottle of beer like Miller or Corona. As you drink the beer, put the end of the bottle in your mouth. Do not let the beer touch your lips, or you’ll know why.
“America needs to make things again.”
That’s simple to do...
1. get rid of most welfare, except for the truly needy
2. get rid of minimum wages
and you will suddenly see all those jobs we sent to china coming back here.
And as a bonus you will also have a much more virtuous society."
Nope, get rid of the EPA!
I hate those toxic twistees. They’ve finally gotten LED down to a competitive price, and I’ve bought my last TT.
Youth unemployment hovers around 40%(!). Of course that could be purely coincidental.
“My specialty is growing superhots, peppers of 1 million Scoville units or higher. If you go to the latest weekly gardening thread you will see a picture I posted of one of my Carolina Reapers.”
You can also dry them out and use them for gunpowder.
Do they dim?
We'll start doing it here, again, just as soon as entrepreneurs are given the same rights as unions.
and is why most pot growers have salt water aquariums in direct view of windows to "throw off" energy audit or "knock and talk".
I love Habeneros and I love beer; the next time that I have a beer I will have to try this!
As for LEDS; not ready for prime time, try again in three years or so.
Buy a (Made in China, yay!!) LED controller for < $10 and you can make the cheap LED strips emit any color you wish. Some have white LEDs interspersed with the RGB (color) ones so you can have a mix of all-spectrum and specific colors at the same time. Plants ought to love that. LEDs also emit UV but check the specs as this varies.
One potential side-effect (benefit?) from LED lighting is that it’s so much more efficient that you can probably put in a lot of LED grow lights withough making a big enough increase in your electric bill to raise any eyebrows. In the past with traditional power-hungry lighting, a high electric bill was a tip-off for authorities to do a little more investigation.
Not surprisingly, if you google “LED grow light” a cannabis-related hit is #3 on the list.
“if you pay for AC, LEDs have hidden savings.”
On the flip side, incandescents are essentially free in the winter - actually I can keep the house a degree or two colder in the winter if I put an incandescent in the reading lamp I keep by my recliner, which (other than the bed) is about the only place I need heat when I’m not moving around. When it comes time to switch over from the furnace to the AC, I switch from incandescent to LCD.
That’s what really ticked me off when incandescents were banned - that was legislation that operated on the assumption that everybody is stupid, and that nobody was capable of figuring out that most of the energy in an Edison bulb ends up as heat, not light. Well sometimes that heat is waste heat . . . but sometimes it’s not.
I am finding these very expensive LightingEver LED lights to be very unreliable and short lived.
They just don’t hold up. When one goes out you don’t just replace the light you replace the whole fixture at great cost and waste of the metal frame and glass of the dead fixture.
My luck with 16 of these things has been lousy since 4 have failed within a year: https://www.lightingever.com/50w-bright-outdoor-flood-bulb-3400043-ww.html
As my CFL bulbs gradually go, all are being replaced with LED lights---track light cans, ceiling fan lights, etc. Love them! First of all, they are instant-on, unlike CFLs, where you have to wait a couple minutes for full light (but you're still paying for the electricity). Second, they don't generate heat. And third, they don't contain mercury, like CFLs do.
Don’t know if the ones I have do, but they do make dimmable LED’s.
The technology has advanced and the cost has come way down.
I was always replacing those Incandescent Spotlights.
The LED’s last a very long time.
I had some early-version LED grow lights, they were clumsy and didn’t put out enough light to keep the plants alive. That was several years ago. The ones in this article look much better!
I’m a compulsive gardener, living where the ground is frozen 4-5 months out of the year. I might add these to my Christmas list :)
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