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Fluorescent Plant Grow Lights
Fluorescents are an excellent choice for starting seedlings to get a jump start on spring plantings. They also are excellent for cultivating a cool weather harvest in the basement year round. Leaf lettuce, spinach, and herbs all will do well year round under fluorescent lamps. The trick is to keep the fluorescent bulbs no further than 4 inches away from the tops of the plants. Since the tubes burn relatively cool to the touch, you do not have to worry about burning plants unless they are actually touching the bulb. Fluorescent tubes are excellent for display and grow lighting for african violets, small cacti and succulents, and many kitchen herbs. New advances in color blending make full-spectrum fluorescents one of the truest color rendering lamps on the market today. Fluorescent tubes are twice as efficient as incandescent bulbs, producing twice as many lumens per watt of energy consumed. Fluorescent bulbs have an average usable life span of up to 20,000 hours... more than 25 times as long as an incandescent.
Metal Halide HID Plant Grow Lights
Metal halide is a highly efficient light source capable of delivering a white light in the range of 2700 to 5500 Kelvin degrees with typical Color Rendering Index (CRI) ratings in the mid-60's to mid-70's. Some lamp chemistries even obtain CRI's in the 80s. The CRI is an index that measures how closely an artificial light source matches the natural colors of sunlight, with 100 being a perfect score. In contrast, high pressure sodium lamps yield yellow lighting (2200K) and have a very poor color rendering index of 22.
By varying the blend of chemicals in the arc tube, metal halide engineers are able to alter the characteristics of the light output. This flexibility in design makes metal halide so versatile. White light is a very important attribute of metal halide technology, because it is the closest to the natural sunlight that people prefer. Metal halide lamps are widely used where color rendering is important such as stadiums, manufacturing plants, malls, and supermarkets.
For horticultural purposes, metal halides tend to produce a shorter, more compact plant habit that more closely resembles plants grown outdoors. A plants appearance growing under most metal halide lamps is almost identical to those growing outside, which makes it the preferred lamp for use in living areas. Horticultural metal halide lamps have increased red spectrum added for increased fruiting and flowering without sacrificing plant appearance.
Metal halide lamps are about five times more efficient than their incandescent counterparts and last up to 25 times longer.
High Pressure Sodium HID Plant Grow Lights
High pressure sodium lamps have been used for years in less color critical applications such as parking lots, street lights and as supplemental greenhouse lighting. The benefit of high pressure sodium lamps to the horticultural industry is their ability to enhance the fruiting and flowering process in plants. The orange/red spectrum HPS produces is the spectrum plants use in their reproductive processes, which generally produces larger harvests of higher quality fruits or flowers. The drawback to growing under high pressure sodium alone is that the plants tend to be taller and leggier with a wider internodal length than plants grown under the bluer light of metal halide.
Another drawback is that plants generally do not appear very healthy growing under HPS. The key word being 'appear', as most plants do grow very well under sodium light. Due to the poor color rendering of high pressure sodium, the plants tend to look pale, washed out or nitrogen starved.
Additional benefits to high pressure sodium lighting are incredibly long usable bulb life... up to two years in many cases; and unparralled efficiency at six times more light output per watt of energy consumed than a standard incandescent bulb.
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Located
on Route 1
10051 N. 2nd. st.
Laurel, Maryland 20723
301-490-9236
1-866-MD-HYDRO
info@mdhydro.com
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