The Various Grow Lights In Hydroponics
While natural light is essential for plant growth in hydroponic gardening, it may well be replaced by artificial lighting. The use of grow lights, as they’re referred to, efficiently extends daylight for the plants (or substitutes for daylight altogether). Regular incandescent lights don’t work well for this purpose because plants need a certain intensity of light for the different stages of growth. (In this type of method, you have to mimic natural sunlight as much as possible.) Among the most appropriate lighting systems for hydroponic plants are the High Intensity Discharge (HID) bulbs ñ two of which are described below. Aside from those two, there are still other types of bulbs that are suitable for hydroponics:
Metal Halide Bulbs (MH)
Arguably the most highly recognized HID-type bulb, metal halide bulbs produce the closest emulation of summer sunlight available, and generate the spectral colors plants thrive on most especially the blues, which are ideal for vegetative growth. MH bulbs are likely to die out gradually and need to be replaced before they actually burn out, because they eventually don’t produce enough lumens to help the plants anymore. Good thing that they are long-lasting, having an average life of 10,000 hours, or a year.
High Pressure Sodium Bulbs (HPS)
The other HID-type bulb, the high pressure sodium bulb, is most appropriate for supplementary lighting, used in combination with natural sunlight. HPS bulbs are more on the orange-red band of the spectrum, which is great for flowering plants. These grow lights are less expensive than metal halide, and longer-lasting (normally 18,000 hours). The downside is, because they are deficient in blue light, HPS bulbs are not usually recommended as a replacement for natural light, nor as an alternative to metal halide. Rather, they would do well in a greenhouse environment.
Fluorescent Bulbs
Where in earlier days fluorescent light bulbs were not intense enough, these days fluorescents are made that have enough lumens to supply light for hydroponics. Notwithstanding if the bulb is high-output or low-output, it can do this job perfectly. Fluorescents emit much smaller amounts of heat than HID bulbs, which means they can be placed much closer to the plants and when they’re placed closer (but not too close), they emit enough of the spectral colors to encourage growth.
LED Grow Lights
The newest version of grow light, the advantage of LED bulbs is that they’re comparable to the output of a high pressure sodium bulb while being remarkably energy efficient, and emitting almost no heat. On the flip side, these bulbs promote slower growth rate and are painful to your budget. In fact, it can be argued that the same growth results can be achieved with fluorescent grow lights, which are far less expensive. So while they are the newest thing, the jury is basically still out on whether LED bulbs will be the wave of the future for grow lights.
